Lorde's much-hyped return to music has finally happened with the release of "Green Light," the upbeat breakup song that will be stuck in your head the second you listen to it. With it comes a new music video featuring Lorde dancing around the city at night solo—apart from a friendly driver who lets her dance on top his car.
It's pretty mesmerizing:
Lorde said on Twitter earlier this week that the single begins the musical narration of the last two years, her final as a teenager.
The single itself lyrically touches on betrayal ("I know about what you did and I wanna scream the truth/She thinks you love the beach, you're such a damn liar")—perhaps the heartbreak Lorde alluded to in a Facebook post in November. As she wrote then:
If I'm being real with myself, in some ways I stopped feeling like a teenager a while ago.
Sometime in the last year or so, part of me crossed over. For one thing, I made a very deliberate choice to withdraw for a little while from a public life. I haven't had my hair or makeup done in a year, the free handbags dried up LONG ago, and the paparazzi at the airport are almost always for someone else. And let me tell you, as much as I love being full noise album cycle girl, it's been a motherfucking joy. (every once in a while I am recognised on the street - one of you breathlessly clutches my hand, shaking and speaking quickly, and I feel this SHOCK of love.)
I turned inwards to my friends, my family, towards this moment, so I could learn more about who I was, and so I could let this new project show itself to me.
And oh my god, it was a colossal year! One for the ages. I maxed out every single emotion I have in the best possible way, the colours still aching behind my eyes like this weird blissful hangover.
My heart broke. I moved out of home and into the city and I made new friends and started to realize that no-one is just good or bad, that everyone is both. I started to discover in a profound, scary, blood-aching way who I was when I was alone, what I did when I did things only for myself. I was reckless and graceless and terrifying and tender. I threw sprawling parties and sat in restaurants until the early hours, learning what it's like to be an adult, even talking like one sometimes, until I caught myself. All I wanted to do was dance. I whispered into ears and let my eyes blaze on high and for the first time I felt this intimate, empire-sized inner power.
And then I wrote a record about it, all of it, so much more than what I've written down here, and I'm in new york getting it done.
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she's not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
