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Girl, so inspiring! Lorde’s 20 best songs – ranked
As she releases euphoric new single What Was That, we assess the New Zealand singer-songwriter’s intense, irreverent oeuvre
If you wanted to take Lorde’s third album, Solar Power, as a farewell to chasing mainstream stardom, closer Oceanic Feeling was strong evidence: her trademark “cherry black lipstick” was “gathering dust in a drawer / I don’t need her any more.” Instead, she offered a beautiful, sun-kissed paean to stepping off the treadmill: “I just had to breathe,” she explains. Photograph: Harry Durrant/Getty Images A grumbling electric guitar plays a folky figure (vaguely evocative of Nico’s celebrated These Days), backing a plethora of worries about the passage of time: youthful beauty fading, relationships withering, tastes in music changing. Ribs sharply evokes both a house party’s hungover aftermath and the weird, liminal nature of adolescence, the disquieting moment when you’re struck by the realisation that your childhood is over and you’re entirely unprepared for whatever is supposed to happen next, no matter how much you pretend you are: “We can talk it so good … it drives you crazy getting old.” Perfectly, the music is all about anticipation: one long build to a climax that never arrives.
Or read this on The Guardian
