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It’s Nice to See Lorde Moving On
Even if her new single feels a bit last decade.
A neat bed of instruments fights to contain the vocalist’s sprawling discontentment, its saturated synths frothing without boiling over as a list of complaints about an ex-lover races out and loops back toward the titular refrain: “What was that?” After parting ways with a record-exec boyfriend in 2023, Lorde is revisiting the darkly universalist dance-pop aesthetics of mid-2010s successes like her 2018 sophomore album Melodrama and the Taylor Swift songs its co-producer Jack Antonoff has worked on. But the result seems a bit last decade; those bleating synth-bass and horn notes would not feel out of place on a radio station in love with Justin Bieber’s “Sorry.” The last album, for all its quirks, was a deliberate rejection of the kind of lacerating, personal sad song “What Was That” eagerly embodies. But there’s a chance that, as with the too-slick Max Martin collab and Melodrama lead track “Green Light,” Lorde is trying to throw you off her scent, waiting to swoop in and knock everyone on their asses with a stunning song cycle that gives the single a bit more purpose.
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