Lorde has revealed that her new album ‘Melodrama’ was originally going to be a concept record about aliens.
The New Zealand star appears on the cover of this week’s free NME, which is available digitally and nationwide from today (June 16). Subscribe now and find out where to pick up a copy here.
Speaking to NME, the singer (real name Ella Yelich-O’Connor) recently said that she had an early idea to write the album from the perspective of aliens stepping outside of a hermetically sealed environment for the first time, linking the concept to her own disorientating experiences with fame.
Although she scrapped her “aliens step out of their bubble” idea, she said that she did gain inspiration from a Ray Bradbury sci-fi short story called There Will Come Soft Rains.
“It’s about this self-operating house and how it continues to run every day after some sort of nuclear event,” Lorde explained to NME. “I was very aware of the fact that we were just holing up in my house, drinking and making a concerted effort to block out the rest of the world, as if there’d been some sort of nuclear fallout. When there’ve been two years that have been so turbulent and traumatic, and the climate is so tangible when you walk outside… There was definitely an element of, ‘If we just make our own little universe inside and no one looks at their phones, then none of it’s really happening.’”
The singer also said that she drew inspiration from her friendship group and taking “field notes” of their interactions: “A lot of being in America was about watching people’s faces and realising I didn’t really know what they were saying. I would meet American boys and be like, ‘I don’t even think I’m being an accurate version of myself because I’m so confused by who you are.’ A lot of going back to New Zealand is about knowing how to decode people again.”
Of the album’s sound and working with Jack Antonoff of Bleachers, Lorde said: “We laboured over every little sound, every word to a level that I think people would never even pick up on.”
Elsewhere in her NME interview, Lorde talked about dealing with fame and body-shaming trolls and feeling “empowered” writing break-up songs for her new record.
Lorde releases her second album ‘Melodrama’ today (June 16), having already shared four songs from it – ‘Green Light‘, ‘Perfect Places’, ‘Sober’ and ‘Liability‘. She had also performed another new track, ‘Homemade Dynamite‘, live.
In support of the album, Lorde will play the following UK live dates later this year:
26 Sep – Manchester, UK @ O2 Apollo
27 Sep – London, UK @ Alexandra Palace
30 Sep – Brighton, UK @ Brighton Centre
1 Oct – Birmingham, UK @ O2 Academy
2 Oct – Glasgow, UK @ O2 Academy