After years of waiting, it seems new Lorde music is finally imminent.
On Monday, the singer updated her website (thank you, “Lorde Analytics” for flagging) with a photo of herself on the beach below the words “Solar Power.” This, we can only assume, is the cover art for a much-awaited new single, the prelude to an album Lorde has been working on with producer Jack Antonoff since around December 2019.
Below the image is a somewhat pointed message: “Arriving in 2021 … Patience is a virtue.” Don’t we know it!
Lorde originally intended for the album to come out sooner—it being four years now since the release of Melodrama—but its production was delayed when her dog Pearl died in 2019.
“I have lost my boy, and I need some time to see the good again, to finish making this [album] for you,” she told fans at the time. “It won’t be the same work—as anyone who has felt loss can understand, there’s a door that opens that you step through, and everything is different on the other side.”
She checked in with another update last May, writing that her album with Antonoff had “started to take shape,” but that it would still take “a while longer.”
She also wisely reasoned that it would behoove her to take her time releasing new music since it would allow her to grow out her hair: “I think after Melodrama came out I said I wouldn’t put out another record until my hair was long—both because hair takes time to grow … and because I knew the next record would require the wildest hair yet.”
So yes, it’s been a long wait for new Lorde music—but why wouldn’t we want her operating at the height of her powers/hair length?