Lorde Celebrates ‘Melodrama’ Anniversary, Reveals Taylor Swift’s Advice About Album Sales

Hannah Dailey
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Lorde is giving fans a supercut of memories to look back on in celebration of Melodrama‘s six-year anniversary, from the anxiety-ridden days she spent writing lyrics for the 2017 album to the sage advice Taylor Swift gave her after its release.

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“Apparently Melodrama is 6,” the pop star began a flurry of throwback photos and videos posted to her Instagram Story Friday (June 16), going on to share snaps from when she was 18 or 19 years old putting the album together.

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In one picture, she eats breakfast during her longterm stay at the Park Hyatt hotel in New York City — where she made a majority of the album with producer Jack Antonoff — revealing at the time she had “truly no idea that it was an extremely expensive hotel and thus spent most of my [album] advance on hotel bills.”

“Lots of dramatic lyric writing sessions such as this,” she captioned another photo of her sitting with a laptop in an empty bathtub. “I was so anxious all the time, my heart was like a little bird’s.”

Upon its June 16, 2017 release, Melodrama debuted atop the Billboard 200 and sold an impressive 109,000 equivalent album units in its first week. Lorde’s debut record, however, not only spawned a nine-week No. 1 hit with “Royals,” but sold 129,000 copies in its first week.

It appears that 2017 Lorde was a little disappointed that Melodrama didn’t perform quite as well as its predecessor, based on a text conversation with none other than Taylor Swift. But the “Royals” singer’s longtime friend and role model was able to cheer her up with a piece of advice, which present-day Lorde remarked was “very kind and not wrong.”

“You will always be imagined in my mind in a rowboat with Annie Lennox floating down a river of cool cerebral ethereal dreams but don’t-f–k-with-me vibes all around you,” Swift wrote in her text to Lorde at the time, as seen in a screenshot posted by the latter artist. “And I don’t think first week record sales singularly define a legacy.”

The “Green Light” musician, who released her third album Solar Power in 2021, closed out her trip down memory lane with a tease at what’s to come. “Lots of love and see you …soon,” she wrote, sharing a recent photo of herself in the studio, recording vocals.

Revisit to Melodrama below.

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