The post Lorde Retraces Her Steps on “What Was That”: Review appeared first on Consequence.
If the earthy ennui and sun-soaked New Zealand setting of Lorde’s last album Solar Power didn’t do it for you, you’ll be pleased to learn she’s returned to Melodrama mode. In fact, she’s returned to New York City, where she crafted Melodrama nearly nine years ago, to celebrate (and promote) her new single, “What Was That.”
Call it a comeback, a return to form, or a new breakup anthem for the ages — “What Was That” finds Lorde reprising the cathartic pop sound that many of her fans were yearning for, once again using her deft songwriting vocabulary to express knotty, complicated feelings. While it’s not the most adventurous new offering from the singer, it does teem with maturity and wisdom.
On “What Was That,” Lorde looks back at a crucial time in her life, where she was consumed by a relationship and the new experiences associated with it, where personal growth was going hand-in-hand with trauma. It’s fitting that the sonics recall the throbbing pop of Melodrama, because “What Was That” serves as the next chapter of that story: those messy early/mid 20s, full of intense rushes and harrowing lows, and the subsequent numbing that sets in as you get older.
Lorde, now 28, captures the experience of ruminating on earlier experiences, desperately wanting to relive every single good moment, and expressing bewilderment that the bad ones happened at all. It’s way less of a ‘remember back then when everything was so simple and I was in love?’ song as it is a fraught montage of memories, a poignant reminder that even the most freeing moments of our lives can happen in the foreground of the worst ones. “I didn’t know then, but you’d never be enough,” she announces with conviction in the chorus before the sobering question, “Since I was seventeen, I gave you everything/ Now we wake from a dream, baby, what was that?”
Basically, Lorde’s been going to therapy. While the offering of a changed perspective is both authentic and refreshing, “What Was That” feels a lot like a step sideways than a leap in any direction. Perhaps that’s due to the song’s cutting, ecstatic production, which snaps into form just like “Green Light” did all those years ago. This time, she’s ditched her Melodrama and Solar Power collaborator Jack Antonoff for fellow pop connoisseurs Jim E-Stack and Dan Nigro, who add a touch more reverb to Lorde’s vocals and balance her anthemic hues with tight, syncopated synths and the thwack of a snare drum.
It’s fine-tuned dance pop, but it’s worth wondering what the song would sound like if the cracks began to show unexpectedly, if the memory collapsed on itself a bit more. Solar Power avoided these moments too, but Lorde overcompensated with stirring lyrical moments like “I don’t know, maybe I’m just stoned at the nail salon” and Robyn’s monologue about death.
Still, what a rush it is to hear Lorde break down the aftermath of a relationship with such expressive detail and honesty. “I tried to let whatever has to pass through me pass through, but this is stayin’ a while, I know/ It might not let me go,” she sings before the final refrain, a rather direct way of acknowledging that she won’t be able to answer the question, “What was that?” for some time. The good memories, the high highs, the yearning and grief… it’s all still stuck in her body. So she’s out in the park, thrashing it out on a table with strangers, trying to shake it off and live in the present moment. She doesn’t have her answers, but as the music video for “What Was That” suggests, that won’t stop her from having fun.
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