We Dug Up Alllll the Dirt on Lorde’s New Album, ‘Solar Power,’ so You Don’t Have to (You’re Welcome)

The year of our lord 2020 massively sucked for many obvious reasons, but the one thing that managed to keep me (and millions of others) sane was all the amazing music we got despite the circumstances! Taylor Swift released two albums. Demi Lovato made their long-awaited return to the music scene. Ariana Grande even whistle-harmonized with Mariah “Skinny Legend” Carey before the year’s end! But the one female in pop we’re still waiting on in 2021? Miss Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, aka our favorite brooding pop star, Lorde.

It has been 84 four years since Lorde released her critically acclaimed sophomore album, Melodrama—you know, the record that gave us the tear-jerking, perfect-to-cry-to ballad that is “Liability,” the sublime dance track that is “Green Light,” I could go on—but that’s not an uncommon amount of time for Lorde to break between projects. It also took 3.5 years to get Melodrama after she dropped Pure Heroine. Numbers aside, the fans are clearly starving for new music.

The good news though? Lorde has been feeding us teensy crumbs of intel about album three (plus singles!!!) over the past few months, which I have compiled below for easy finding. Read on and learn what Lorde’s new universe—a gorgeous summery wonderland—may have in store for us!

Starting with the most important Q: Are there any singles yet?

YES! After some mini drama, you can now listen to “Solar Power” to your heart’s content (and shop Lorde’s beautiful sunny yellow dress while you’re at it).

Lorde first announced the single on her official website after the art leaked (boo). Snippets of the single also made rounds on the web, which led to rumors of Lorde possibly dropping the single on June 10.

But there was a little release hiccup—outlets started reporting that fans were *already* streaming “Solar Power” in certain parts of the world even though it wasn’t released everywhere yet. This seemed to be against Lorde’s wishes too, because shortly after the song started appearing on Apple Music, it was removed.

Following the title track's release, Lorde also blessed fans with two more breezy bops: “Stoned at the Nail Salon” and “Mood Ring.”

What can fans expect Lorde’s album to sound like?

Back in May 2020, Lorde sent her fans a life update via email, revealing that she “started going back to the studio again” around December 2019 for the sole purpose of keeping herself busy. During that time, she made what she called “happy, playful” music. In the same email, Lorde said she thinks the album “is so f*cking good” and she is “truly jazzed for you to hear it.”

What inspired Lorde during the making of the album?

Funny you ask, because last year, Lorde spent a lot of time talking about her Antarctica trip. She loved her trip so much that it inspired her to make a 100-page photo book titled Going South.

“I realized after the trip that what my brain had been craving was a visit to an alternate realm,” she wrote in an email sent to fans in November. “Albums live in their own realms in a way, and Antarctica really acted as this great white palette cleanser, a sort of celestial foyer I had to move through in order to start making the next thing. In the plane coming down to land, I had this very intense bolt-of-lightning thought, which in all its eloquence was literally ‘DON’T MAKE SHIT RECORDS,’ lol.”

Apparently, the album is the exact opposite of the arctic tundra, because it’s literally titled Solar Power and heavily focused on summer, if her recent newsletter is any indicator:

Who is Lorde working with on creating the album?

So far we have:

Jack Antonoff

In Lorde’s email to fans from May, she said, “Jack [Antonoff] came over to work in the studio in Auckland, and I went to L.A. It flowed,” she wrote. “A thing started to take shape. And then, of course, the world shut down. We’re still working away—Jack and I FaceTimed for over an hour this morning going over everything. But it’ll take a while longer.”

Jack previously worked with Lorde when he cowrote and coproduced Melodrama. Some other notable achievements of Jack’s include cowriting and coproducing songs for Taylor Swift’s Lover, Folklore, and Evermore and cowriting and coproducing for Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell album, which earned an Album of the Year Grammy nomination this past year.

Exactly *when* is this album coming out?

Soon! In her recent newsletter, Lorde dropped the album release date for Solar Power, which we now know to be August 20. Mark! Your! Calendars!

This is a major update from the last one we got a few months ago, thank god. In a December 2020 interview with Blackbird Skyplane, Lorde shared that she was still carving out what she wanted the universe of her album to be, and because of that, she didn’t know when the record will be complete. Plus, with the pandemic happening this year, it threw off the process juuuuust a smidgen.

She said:

Is there an official track list yet?

Yep, and it’s as follows:

1. “The Path”

2. “Solar Power”

3. “California”

4. “Stoned at the Nail Salon”

5. “Fallen Fruit”

6. “Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All)”

7. “The Man With the Axe”

8. “Dominoes”

9. “Big Star”

10. “Leader of a New Regime”

11. “Mood Ring”

12. “Oceanic Feeling”

Lorde also revealed that there are going to be two bonus tracks, so be on the lookout for those!

Are we getting a tour?

Heck yeah, we are. See the list of Lorde's 2022 tour dates below:

That’s all we know about Lorde’s upcoming album so far, but keep your eyes on this story for any future updates.

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