As 2017 began, one pop star's name served as a mainstay on lists of the year's most-anticipated albums: Lorde.
The New Zealand singer/songwriter first made a name for herself at just 16 with her GRAMMY-nominated debut album, 2013's Pure Heroine. Aside from the 2013-2014 Pure Heroine Tour, Lorde spent much of the intervening four years living a mostly secluded life — until Nov. 6, 2016, the eve of her 20th birthday, when she revealed that her sophomore album did in fact exist.
"Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory, putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies, and this record — well, this one is about what comes next," she wrote in a Facebook post, as she left her teenage years behind.
At the same time, Jack Antonoff had gone from fun. guitarist/drummer and Bleachers frontman to producing songs for major pop players like Carly Rae Jepsen and Taylor Swift. (Antonoff has credited Swift for getting his production career off the ground; he has two Album Of The Year GRAMMYs thanks to his work on 2014's 1989 and 2020's folklore). But until Melodrama, Antonoff had yet to take on a lead producer role for another artist.
Antonoff and Lorde shared a friend in Swift, and after hitting it off at a GRAMMY party in 2014, they tried out their chemistry in the studio. As detailed in a 2017 New York Times profile, Antonoff's innate balance "between the intimate and the outsize" was a perfect fit for the musical world Lorde was looking to create with Melodrama — and the result was massive.
Melodrama — released five years ago today, on June 16th, 2017 — not only cemented Lorde's legacy as a defining voice of pop's new generation, but altered pop around the sound Antonoff and Lorde created together.
The Lorde of Melodrama is very different from the Lorde of Pure Heroine, not only in sound but in demeanor. In 2013, Lorde was not that far removed from just being Ella Yelich-O'Connor, a kid from a suburban New Zealand town of less than 10,000. Early singles like "Tennis Court'' and "Royals" emphasize Lorde's humble upbringing, noting how she'd never seen a diamond or even been on a plane.
Even on tracks without such direct acknowledgements of her youth, Pure Heroine found Lorde wide-eyed and eager to explore the world opening up to her, with its Joel Little production matching the starstruck, humble demeanor of the lyrics. The charming honesty about her lack of worldliness combined with simple, sparse production resonated, with the album going triple platinum by 2016 and earning Lorde two GRAMMYS, including Song of the Year for "Royals."
As the title implies, Melodrama isn't quite as jubilant. The late teenage years can often be a tumultuous time for anyone, and Lorde is no exception. In the four years between albums, Lorde's long-term relationship with photographer James Lowe ended, and she had to suddenly grapple with being one of the most famous people on the planet before she even turned 18.
As Lorde expressed in her birthday-eve post, she was "reckless and graceless and terrifying and tender." This shows up immediately on "Green Light," the album's opening track and lead single. Thematically, it unveiled a Lorde who was in a more liberated and mature, yet messy part of her life. Emphasized by a triumphant chorus, the song's message of getting the "green light" to simply live freely welcomed listeners into a more complicated world than the one she inhabited in 2013 — one that was also quite beautiful.
While "Green Light" opens with simple piano chords that wouldn't be out of place on Pure Heroine (notably, it's one of only two tracks that Little co-produced), it quickly ramps up into something so much more. By the time the first chorus hits, it's clear something new is happening with Lorde's music on Melodrama. The piano has given way to a dense jungle of euphoric production, built around synths and a looping melodic hook as she proclaims, "I'm waiting for it, that green light, I want it." It's a tone-setter both emotionally and musically for Melodrama as a whole, and a perfect introduction to this new era for both its pop star and producer.
The album also marked new territory for Antonoff, as he was deeply ingrained in the entire process of Melodrama. Antonoff co-wrote and co-produced 10 of the 11 tracks alongside Lorde, the only exception being the more club-oriented "Homemade Dynamite" (which still featured a heavy-hitting co-writer, indie-pop darling Tove Lo).
Antonoff's production style can be described in two simple words: catchy and more. He finds a great hook and builds a towering sound in support of it, like on the richly nuanced "I Wanna Get Better" from Bleachers' debut LP, 2014's Strange Desire. In that way, the pairing of Antonoff and Lorde came at the perfect time for both of them: While Antonoff was beginning to push his production towards higher aspirations, Lorde was also wrapped up in the idea of more.
Throughout the album — and her life as a young adult — the singer strives for doing more, feeling more, and just being more. Some of the album's most touching moments are her journey towards more, as well as the moments of doubt on whether more has become too much, like on "Liability" and "Writer in the Dark." Antonoff deftly dialed back his production on these tracks, though his rich layering still shines.
The often-complicated quest of Melodrama reflects the journey of a teenager finding themselves — particularly, those in the late 2010s. As social media became a ubiquitous part of everyday life and the news, it simultaneously gave everyone more room to explore who they are and exposed them to more adult, existential issues. The climate crisis, which later inspired Lorde's trip to Antarctica in 2019, loomed large even in 2017; it's hard not to hear the urgency to live life in the face of looming disaster on Melodrama, especially on tracks like "Perfect Places."
Lorde treats these issues with the same weight as the fraught relationships and breakups of the late teenage years — because for a teenager, they can carry the same weight. "All the glamor and the trauma/ And the f***in melodrama," she growls on "Sober II," an encapsulation of the entire project.
Upon its release, Melodrama was immediately lauded by critics and fans. The album received glowingreviews, earning both Lorde and Antonoff a lot of praise, including a GRAMMY nomination for Album of the Year in 2018. And even five years later, Melodrama still proves to be a pivotal moment for each of their careers.
The acclaim for the sounds of Melodrama resonated across the industry, and it certified Antonoff an in-demand collaborator. While he'd still be recruited for singles from artists like BANKS, his role became much more prominent on some of pop's biggest albums that were to come.
Swift had Antonoff produce six tracks on her experimental 2017 album, reputation, the majority of her 2019 LP Lover, and a handful of folklore tracks; he produced almost all of Lana Del Rey's universally acclaimed 2019 album, Norman F*cking Rockwell!, and its followup, 2021's Chemtrails Over The Country Club; the Chicks put their 2020 comeback album, Gaslighter, in his hands.
Across all of these albums, Antonoff brought his big, layered sound along with him, melding it with the often disparate styles all of the artists had previously employed. It can be heard in the constant buildup and stacking of instrumental lines on Del Rey's sprawling "Venice B****," the way the vocal harmonies resonate on the Chicks' "Gaslighter," or on the towering "King" from Florence + The Machine's latest album Dance Fever. Antonoff and Lorde also reunited in 2021 for her third album, Solar Power, proving their collaboration could work across a brighter sound palette as well.
As pop packed in more production for sounds to become bigger and bolder going into the 2020s, it can certainly be traced back to Melodrama. The pairing of Lorde and Jack Antonoff raised both of their stars immeasurably — at the same time, spawning an album that captured the mood of growing up in a fast-moving world, and coining a sound that the biggest names in pop are still chasing today.
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