Lorde's lack of imagination

notes from a lapsed Lorde fan

You have to understand that I’ve grown up with Lorde, who was born five months before me on the other side of the planet. When she was a precocious 15-year-old, I related to her lyrics of suburban isolation. When she was 19, I relished her songs of heartbreak and hedonism. But by the time we were both in our twenties, I noticed that the primary subject of a Lorde song was Lorde herself. That wouldn’t be a problem if her life were interesting, or if she grounded her lyrics in universal human experiences. But it’s hard to relate to a song about how tough it was to be a “teen millionaire having nightmares from the camera flash.” Or about winning a Grammy and going to the Met Gala. Or about the songwriter’s own precocity:

I thought I was a genius, but now I'm 22
And it's starting to feel like all I know how to do is
Put on a suit, and take it away

Great songwriting requires imagination. “Like a Rolling Stone” is not about Dylan himself; it’s a screed against an imagined down-and-out socialite. Robert Johnson didn’t sell his soul to the devil, John Prine wasn’t an old woman named after her mother, and Eminem never murdered his wife. Daring lyrics invite discomfort, from murder ballads to suicide songs. I think of Mick Jagger, Elliott Smith and Sufjan Stevens emulating serial killers. Rihanna shooting a rapist on “Man Down.” Kate Bush realizing that the charming man she danced with was on the front page of the newspaper for invading Poland.¹

On Virgin, Lorde tries to unnerve us with lyrics like, “soap, washing him off my chest,” “he spit in my mouth like he’s saying a prayer,” and “your metal detector hits my precious treasure.” In her latest Rolling Stone profile, she said, “I often really tried to hit this kind of gnarliness or grossness.” But the physical substances of sex just aren’t that interesting or subversive. Spit and semen mean nothing on their own. What do they feel like? Sticky? Wet? How do they smell and taste? What emotions do they evoke?

Too many of Lorde’s lyrics tell instead of show. She wants us to know that she is no longer a child, so she tells us about all the drugs she’s done, yet she never shows what those experiences were like. She sings, “MDMA in the back garden, blow our pupils up,” offering nothing more than a description of a physiological effect of the drug. I’ve never done ecstasy, but the monotone of “What Was That” doesn’t bring me any closer to imagining what it’s like. The Beatles didn’t say, “LSD in Beverly Hills, Peter Fonda shows us his bullet wound.” They twisted the experience into an imaginary scenario about an argument with a lover: “She said, ‘I know what it’s like to be dead. I know what it is to be sad.’ And she’s making me feel like I’ve never been born.” More than that, they made the song sound like acid. All the great sixties psychedelic rock albums do this, with those tinny, intricate guitar riffs: Revolver, Surrealistic Pillow, Os Mutantes, Odyssey and Oracle. You don’t need to have taken acid to realize that they are attempting to sonically replicate the experience of a trip.

I think that Lorde’s stifling introspection also explains some of her recent comments and lyrics about her gender identity. In a move I found to be tacky, Lorde ignored the Met Gala theme of Black Dandyism so she could wear a duct tape dress to promote her album and hint at “where she’s at, gender-wise.” As she says on the first track of Virgin, “Some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man.” The album cover is an X-ray of her pelvis with an IUD, and the vinyl contains a photo insert of her mons pubis. In her Rolling Stone interview, she discusses going off birth control for the first time in 10 years and describes ovulation as “one of the best drugs I’ve ever done.” But she also links her freedom from birth control to the expansion of her gender identity. At this point, I’m confused. What does enjoying ovulation have to do with being a man? Or is Lorde incapable of imagining a version of womanhood that has room for androgyny?

It might very well be that Lorde is, some days, a man. But what does that mean? What does it feel like? We don’t know; she doesn’t show us. The closest we come to finding out is on “Man of the Year,” when she sings, “How I hope that I’m remembered, my gold chain, my shoulders, my face in the light.” SOPHIE aspired for immateriality; Lorde embraces the physical. I want to shake her by those shoulders she’s so proud of and say, “Bitch, you created one of the greatest albums ever, but you want to be remembered for your fucking gold chain?”

It gives me no joy to be this much of a hater. I just wish that Lorde would write a song about anything other than herself.

1. This is not to say that great songs can’t be autobiographical. But great autobiographical lyrics are specific and lucid. I’m thinking of “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” in which Joni Mitchell’s ex-lover reads her like a book:

The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68
And he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe
You laugh, he said you think you're immune, go look at your eyes
They're full of moon
You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
All those pretty lies, pretty lies

We can imagine the intimacy of the conversation. All we need to know about Joni, we hear in her ex’s words. A similarly intimate snapshot comes from “Mythological Beauty,” which Adrianne Lenker directs to her mother:

Rented a house in Niswah, Minnesota
Shrapnel and oil cans, rhubarb in the yard
I built a ladder out of metal pieces
Father was working hard
Standing beneath the oak tree by the front door
You were inside baking bread
Sister came out and put her arms around me
Blood gushing from my head
You held me in the backseat with a dishrag
Soaking up blood with your eye
I was just 5 and you were 27 praying don't let my baby die