Album review: Lorde, Melodrama - 'Perhaps the first great pop record of 2017'
In this golden era of female pop stars, Lorde stands enigmatically apart. Her 2013 debut album Pure Heroine was a meditation on teenage introspection written by a shockingly self-aware 16-year-old. Now comes a sequel in which the New Zealander born Ella Yelich-O’Connor explores the pain and joy of growing up through a prism of drunken parties, stop-start romances and existentially-unmooring hangovers.
It’s a dark, riveting affair — a masterpiece of off-kilter pop that confirms Lorde as perhaps the most fascinating figure the music industry has produced since pop supplanted rock as the medium of the age. Once again, her trembling voice contained multitudes, signalling wry despair on bad romance rumination ‘The Louvre’ and the temporary euphoria of the dance-floor on single ‘Green Light’.
