Melodrama (Lorde album)
Melodrama is the second studio album by New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde. It was released on 16 June 2017 by Lava and Republic Records and distributed through Universal. Following the breakthrough success of her debut album Pure Heroine (2013), Lorde retreated from the spotlight, and travelled between New Zealand and the United States. Initially inspired by her disillusionment with fame, she wrote Melodrama to capture heartbreak and solitude after her first breakup.
Melodrama
16 June 2017
2015–2017
- Electric Lady (New York)
- Rough Customer (Brooklyn Heights)
- Westlake (Los Angeles)
- Conway (Los Angeles)
- Jungle City (New York)
40:59
Lorde chose Jack Antonoff as the main collaborator because she felt the need to expand her artistry from the Joel Little-produced Pure Heroine. The final product is an electropop record incorporating piano-based melodies, pulsing synthesisers and dense electronic beats. Critics viewed the album as a maximalist departure from the minimalist hip hop-influenced production of its predecessor, and considered it a loose concept album chronicling the emotions ensued from a house party. The songs "Green Light", "Perfect Places", and "Homemade Dynamite" were released as singles. Lorde promoted the album through several music festivals she headlined, and the Melodrama World Tour in 2017 and 2018.
The album was Lorde's first number one in the United States and Canada, and also peaked atop the charts in Australia and New Zealand. It received gold or platinum certifications in the said countries and the United Kingdom. Melodrama received near-unanimous acclaim from contemporary critics who complimented its sound and Lorde's vocals and direct songwriting; it was featured on various year-end and decade-end lists. It won a New Zealand Music Award for Album of the Year, and received a nomination for Album of the Year at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards in 2018. In 2020, Melodrama ranked at number 460 on Rolling Stone's revision of their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.
Artwork[edit]
The cover artwork for Melodrama was painted by American abstract painter Sam McKinniss, with whom Lorde had communicated by email. The pair agreed to meet and started discussing a collaboration. Lorde later visited McKinniss' studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she took a liking to a full-figure portrait of the cover photograph of Prince's 1984 album Purple Rain and a painting of Lil' Kim. Lorde asked McKinniss to create a painting with a "kind of colorful teenage restlessness and excitement and energy and potential".[19]
McKinniss and Lorde met in November 2016 at his friend's studio on the 42nd floor of Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce Street skyscraper,[20] which consisted of coloured bulbs on a lighting rig and a space with several windows. For the album shoot, Lorde wore a vintage negligee and posed for two hours. According to McKinniss, the album art is the "converging of two like minds" and "simpatico spirits".[21] The pair considered making the photography session "operatic" and pre-Raphaelite-inspired, but scrapped the idea because they were satisfied with Lorde's facial expressions on the resulting images. McKinniss made two paintings from his photographs; one featured a blue glow with a warm flush on Lorde's cheek and the other has different lighting, with "paler, sweeter" colours.[20] The unused painting was later revealed in an interview with McKinniss for Dazed.[22]
NME placed the cover on their list of the best album artworks of the 21st century so far.[23] Paste ranked it at number 11 in their year-end list for album covers,[24] and it also appeared on Billboard's unranked list. Tatiano Cirisano, writing for the latter publication, said McKinniss "perfectly communicates the intimacy and coming-of-age storyline" of the record with its "hazy twilight hues and bedside setting".[25] Fuse also ranked the cover in their year-end list.[26]
Songs[edit]
Tracks 1–5[edit]
The album's opening track, "Green Light", features titular metaphors; reviewers interpreted the "green light" as a street signal that gives the singer permission to move into the future.[44] It was described by critics as an electropop,[45] dance-pop,[46] and post-disco song.[47] Lorde was inspired to write the track after attending a Florence and the Machine concert with Antonoff; the writing process took her 18 months to complete.[48] "Sober", which was formed using a bongo drum, was written after Lorde played a show at Coachella. The track's instrumentation also includes a tenor and baritone saxophone, a trumpet,[49] as well as the sound of a tiger's roar, which was added when Antonoff looked through samples on his computer.[50]
Lorde co-wrote "Homemade Dynamite" with Tove Lo.[51] It is the only song on which Antonoff is not credited as a songwriter or producer.[12] Lorde was inspired to write "The Louvre" after listening to Frank Ocean's 2016 album Blonde. She stated in a podcast interview with The Spinoff that she could have made a "big, easy single" but refrained from doing so because she felt it would not mean much to "simplify the journey" or "force a big chorus".[52] She said that the production process was "exciting", stating, "I can use guitars and I can get a big gnarly Flume beat and throw it under water."[53] According to Newsweek, the singer's cadence in some lines almost turns into rapping, which was compared with cross-genre music.[28] "Liability" is the first piano ballad on the album; in a profile with The Spinoff, Lorde said was inspired by the track "Higher" from Rihanna's 2016 album Anti, which she listened to when she took a taxi home from a hike.[48]
Commercial performance[edit]
On the US Billboard 200, Melodrama debuted at number one with first-week sales of 109,000 album-equivalent units, of which 82,000 were pure sales, becoming Lorde's first number one in the United States.[78] The album dropped to number 13 the following week.[79] The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) awarded the album a gold certification, which denotes 500,000 units in consumption.[80] Melodrama was also her first number-one album in Canada,[81] where it received a platinum certification.[82] It also debuted atop the charts in Australia[83] and New Zealand,[84] receiving platinum[85] and triple-platinum certifications in respective countries.[86] It entered the UK Albums Chart at number five[87] and was certified gold in the United Kingdom.[88]
Notes
Sample credits[12]