Parasitic Paradise
An amateur analysis of Lorde's "Solar Power" album.
Melodrama, the second album of Lorde, is celebrated as 'the concept album of concept albums'. But Lorde is Lord, and everything is intentional, so, here is my (maybe questionable) argument that Solar Power should be treated as a concept album.
Melodrama uses 'The Party' as a metaphor or motif for love in all stages, and for young-adulthood as a whole. Solar Power uses 'The Cult' as a metaphor for happiness. Specifically, forced happiness.
Since the Love Club EP, Lorde has always been defined by her moodiness. Solar Power seemingly broke this trend. But that was the point: She was still moody. The folk-pop was a mask.
A cult is deliberate, crafted, illusionary. It's not real. The era of happiness Ella was trying to convey is exactly that. Not real. Disingenuine. It doesn't fix problems, it makes new ones.
The Path
She begins with "Born in the year of OxyContin/ ... / Teen millionaire having nightmares from the camera flash/ Now I'm alone on a windswept island/ Caught in the complex divorce of the seasons", highlighting the overwhelming nature of her life. She is looking for a way out. She has been from the start. The previous song in the discography, Perfect Places, is about substances as a mechanism for escapism, and how they don't get you there. She knows you can't find a perfect place, so she decides to create one. This is the birth of the cult. She continues, "Now if you're looking for a saviour, that's not me/ Let's hope the sun will show us the path". She sets our her plan. She's distraught, stressed, burnt-out. Her emotions, her fame, everything, its too much. She renounces her role as idol and decides to follow the one thing that isn't changing, from adolescence to adulthood. Nature. She follows the sun.
The track also has a music video, showing the cult taking shape with synchronised dancing, vibrant clothing and natural tones.
Solar Power
As the cult develops, she embraces her newfound mindset. The occult aesthetic has thickened. She sings, "I'm kinda like a prettier Jesus", representing the transition. It juxtaposes with her earlier admission she isn't a saviour; she is know better than the saviour. The song itself is whole and calm and natural and dynamic. This is how she wants to feel. Free of fame and cellular devices (she threw them into the water). Instead she has the beach and close (though maybe inauthentic) connections of the cult.
Again, the track has an accompanying music video, similar in nature to the previous, though showcasing Lorde as the true leader of the cult, prancing around, socialising, everything moving around her. For her.
California
The cult continues with "Goodbye to all the bottles, all the models / Bye to the clouds in the skies that all hold no rain".The track's calmer atosphere may symbolise the occult aesthetic and routines becoming normalised, or maybe something darker, more introspective. In a way, it feels off, jarring.
"It's just a dream / It's all just a dream / I wanna wake up / I wanna wake up"
Stoned At The Nail Salon
The fourth track is where the cult begins to fall apart. "Got a wishbone dryin' on the windowsill in my kitchen/ Just in case I wake up and realize I've chosen wrong/ I love this life that I have ... / ... but I wonder sometimes what I'm missin'". She has settled in to the cult, but it doesn't sit quite right. She knows it is off somehow. She is meant to be natural and whole and calm, but instead, she is, well, stoned at a nail salon, a dissonant image that highlights the superficiality of her new life.
The cult is falling apart.
Fallen Fruit
And it all goes downhill from here. She realizes she can't rely on nature. The weather turns. Climate Change is real. She can't hide in this cult, use the sun as an shield to hide behind, because the shield is rotting away. She's ignoring something real, a real threat to her lifestyle. Those that came before her ruined everything good. She is anxious, scared, angry. From here, the tone shifts. She isn't solving her problems by turning to the Sun, making the Cult. She is hiding. Its "Perfect Places", but the drug is a lie told to oneself.
Secrets From A Girl
And then the tone suddenly shifts. It seems like a reflective yet upbeat kind of track. Passing on the wisdom she's gathered. And there's not much to the main part of the song. Maybe it seems rushed. Maybe she's rummaging through morals and lessons, finding something to solve her cult crippling. Maybe she's trying to keep telling herself these lies, that it will all be fine and her problems are gone. But then comes the Outro. Robyn sings "Welcome to sadness". Lorde realises she;s been treating sadness as a fleeting nuisance, a holiday, rather than a state of being or a problem to be fixed. Something you come and look at and then go home to never think of again.
And this is where it all falls apart. Suddenly she feels everything.