The Misunderstood Genius of Solar Power

Solar Power wasn’t a flop—it was just emotionally evolved. Sorry if your prefrontal cortex wasn’t ready.

After the release of her sophomore studio album, Melodrama (2017), Lorde solidified herself as a craft master of an artist. Melodrama won the hearts of a generation of teens in the 2010s. You can’t listen to songs like “Supercut,” “Homemade Dynamite,” “Hard Feelings / Loveless,” and “The Louvre” and not realize something shifted.

Defeating the sophomore slump allegations and cementing her icon status, the album’s longevity proves what many suspected from the start: it was truly ahead of its time. This led to high anticipation for what would become Solar Power (2021), her third studio album.

Solar Power is strikingly different from Melodrama. With a new look, Lorde bleached her hair and associated her new era with a buttercream yellow dress—before it was a trendy wedding dress color last summer. In contrast to its predecessor's production, Solar Power is stripped down with lighter synth, acoustic guitar, and ethereal sounds—leaving fans and audiences perplexed.

Whereas Melodrama delves into her devastating breakup at 19 and her house party phase (a universal, canon event, really), Solar Power unfolds Lorde’s self-reflection alongside her activism and connection to nature.

Metaphorically speaking, Melodrama is the equivalent of the house party where you take shrooms in the midst of a breakup. Meanwhile, Solar Power is the guided ayahuasca healing journey on the beach once your prefrontal cortex fully develops.

Solar Power has a Rolodex of introspective pieces—life and career existentialism on “Stoned at the Nail Salon,” memorializing the loss of her late dog, Pearl, on “Big Star,” finding new love in “The Man with the Axe,” and reflecting on her personal growth and past life in “Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All)” and the bonus track “Hold No Grudge.” And that just scratches the surface.

Lorde’s connection to nature plays a significant role in the album. I might need to confirm with my therapist, but I'm pretty sure connecting with nature goes hand-in-hand with psychological healing. That being said, Lorde uses the environment to embrace a new self in songs like the title track “Solar Power” and “Oceanic Feeling”:

“When the heat comes, something takes a hold… Forget all of the tears that you′ve cried / It′s over / It's a new state of mind / Are you coming, my baby? …
Acid green, aquamarine / The girls are dancing in the sand / And I throw my cellular
device in the water”

“Grateful for this offering / And all the living things under the sun…
I know you're scared, so was I / But all will be revealed in time…
Now the cherry-black lipstick's gathering dust in a drawer / I don't need her anymore /
'Cause I got this power / Just had to breathe…
Oh, was enlightenment found? / No, but I'm trying, taking it one year at a time”

No phones in sight, just nature and a little bit of enlightenment + transcendentalism. Welcome back, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

But Lorde’s got more to say about spirituality and the environment, too. It’s funny connecting the dots on the song “Mood Ring,” where Lorde satirizes misguiding pyramid schemes and modern wellness culture. Prior to the release of the music video, Lorde explained in an interview: “‘Mood Ring’ is a song about trying to feel spiritually connected in our modern world and all of the little tools and systems that we all use to try and feel that. […] I thought ‘Mood Ring’ was a really cool metaphor for the magical thinking that we all employ at times to feel well.”

In the song she sings:

“You can burn sage, and I'll cleanse the crystals / We can get high, but only if the wind / blows (blows just right) / I can't feel a thing / I keep looking at my mood ring / Tell me how I'm feeling…
I'm tryna get well from the inside / Plants and celebrity news, all the vitamins I consume / Let's fly somewhere eastern, they'll have what I need…
All the sad girls sing / We'll keep dancing 'til the mood rings / Tell us how we're feeling.”

It’s a bit ironic seeing how capitalism and technology turned “healing” into a bait-and-switch. Leave it to Lorde to call out unfaithful trends. Real af.

More alarmingly, Lorde exclaims the need to protect nature in the face of climate change. It’s in nature that healing finds momentum—but how can we heal in a world that’s falling apart? “Fallen Fruit” expresses concerns about a past generation that stripped the Earth of its resources, leaving younger generations in a hopeless position, “dancing among the fallen fruit.” She paints an apocalyptic world in “Leader of the New Regime” and is desperate for someone to save us—“Wearing SPF 3000 for the ultraviolet rays… won’t somebody, anybody, be the leader of a new regime?”

In line with the album’s messaging, Lorde’s record label released the album with an eco-friendly mindset through its physical Music Boxes. Rather than standard CDs, the biodegradable packaging included handwritten notes and a digital copy of the album. Her team collaborated with EVERYBODY, an ethically responsible supplier, to reduce her carbon footprint and connect with her fans in a different and meaningful way. "I didn’t wanna make something that would end up in a landfill in 2 years,” she wrote on her website. “I wanted to make something that symbolized my commitment to asking questions of our systems, and making stuff with intention and sensitivity."

Expressing concerns for the environment and climate change in the content of her album is truly admirable. I don’t know if I can count on one hand how many mainstream artists center their albums around protecting the environment. Lorde is a wise soul beyond her years. I have this feeling she’d be besties with artists like Joni Mitchell and Patti Smith.

Solar Power, at its core, is Lorde’s dedication to personal growth and inspiration for her listeners to better themselves and their environments. Whereas the subject matter of Solar Power isn’t as mainstream-friendly as Melodrama’s, I argue Solar Power holds its own footing regardless of its initial lack of reception and album sales.

Did the success of Melodrama misguide expectations of what Lorde is fully capable of? Melodrama is dark synth pop perfection and arguably her most critically acclaimed album, but were some of us (most of y’all, actually) not ready for her next move in a different direction? Plus, the content and journey of Solar Power takes an amount of mental gymnastics to process.

It’s been almost four years since Solar Power was released. Initially not the follow-up her fans intended, the album has gained love and an internet cult following since. I think Solar Power proves an album doesn’t need commercial success to be meaningful and transformative. Very similar to its predecessor, I’d argue Solar Power was ahead of its time.

As we are on the eve of new Lorde music and—per Charli XCX’s declaration at Coachella 2025—Lorde Summer 2025, there’s even more to anticipate. Based on the snippet she dropped last week, it sounds like a Melodrama continuation. But content-wise, I’m curious to hear what Lorde wants to tell us next.

I’d argue that Melodrama and Solar Power are opposite forces on the same journey. Melodrama is the purge of heartbreak, while Solar Power is the spiritual recalibration post-breakup.

But what does that mean for her new music? Will her next album be a synthesis of the two? If I had to guess, I’d suggest she’s cooking something that’s matured, balanced, and maybe even a little radical.

(Just predicting it now: imagine a Lorde collab with either Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Joan Baez, or Maggie Rogers on the new album. Imagine a Joni Mitchell feature on an alternative club banger. I’m living for it.)

Lorde has proven she’s always steps ahead of what she releases. Her albums age like wine as she waits for us to catch up. Maybe Solar Power initially took audiences by surprise, but maybe she knew all along it would take time to resonate. And if Lorde’s next release is anything like her past ones, I’d brace for impact.