Just finished first listen and while I liked it overall, I feel like it is a difficult listen - it feels so uniquely personal to Lorde. Not that every song should be something you’d sing in a shower, but it feels (cliche as it is to type this) that this album was more for herself than for anyone else. I hope she feels better having finally released this, I know she had been sitting on some of these tracks for a while now. One critique I will offer is that I feel like nearly every song follows the same structure, with things coming to a crescendo with only 20-30 seconds left in the song and then ending rather abruptly - I wonder if they considered an extended mix of some of them because there are a lot of good things happening and I just wish they had pushed it a bit longer in some cases. Favorites for sure are Shapeshifter and Current Affairs, and another nod to Dan Nigro for his work on Broken Glass, which felt like the one song that kind of broke the mold for me.
Absolutely love this album she’s like 1 month younger than me and every album she’s released has come out at the exact right time for me
Well I'm glad I was wrong about thinking this would be reviewed middling by critics, seems most are happy with it!
The beats outperform Lorde herself. Some of her lyrics are terrible, she is literally just repeating lines we've heard before like "When you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail" and "been to hell and back". So little originality from her once original mind.
I think this is pretty fine, I need to try and sit with it some more. I don’t connect with anything lyrically, and I like the production and beats well enough. I’m just not finding anything big enough to rope me in. I would agree the singles are probably the weaker elements though.
I enjoy this more than I thought I would after really disliking the last one. If She Could See Me Now is my favorite after one listen. The only track I don’t care for is Clearblue.
I actually love Clearblue, feel like it works just because of its length and it wouldn’t if it was much longer I do think some of the lyrics here are kind of distracting, not sure how I’d categorize it. At other times the lyrics are good, never really amazing but not so much an issue. Melody is the star here, Current Affairs has started to stand out to me after a few listens, second verse lyrics seem a bit unnecessary and like it was forced in but melodically this is one of my favs. Do agree the last 3 songs is prob the best stretch, unfortunately this is trending in a way where I’m only coming back to 4-5 songs at a time, still happy with the fact I like that much since I’m just now checking her out (plus lots of good music out this week)
I’m really liking this. I listened to it in the car with my partner, who’s a big fan. The melodies are great, the production seems real cool, I didn’t really listen to the lyrics closely.
Shapeshifter's chorus is stuck in my head, also I just really like "I've been up on the pedestal, but tonight I just wanna fall" as simple as it is
Favorite Daughter > Current Affairs > Clearblue is by far my favorite part of this. I’d say it didn’t totally blow me away but I do like it
Love this album. Just listened to it three times in a row. Her lyrics can be cringy but nothing is as cringy as those emails she used to send out in the lead up to Solar Power, so I’ve come to just accept this is how she writes and appreciate that they’re at least sincere.
I have come back to this album all weekend and it just keeps getting better. Not exactly what I had in mind for “Lorde Summer” but that’s on me. This is among her best work.
finally got a chance to spin this and it's really god. not sure if it'll top Melodrama for me, but definitely feels like a return to form, and one that you can tell had a lot of care put into making it.