Lorde’s New Environment-Inspired Song ‘Solar Power’ Is Renewable Energy for the Soul

In honor of the only solar eclipse of 2021, Lorde has made her long-awaited return to music. Four years after her second studio album “Melodrama,” Lorde has released the first single off her upcoming album of the same name, “Solar Power.” 

And if the title didn’t tip you off enough, this album is dedicated to nature — and undoubtedly inspired by Lorde’s passion for fighting climate change. While this may be a surprise to some fans, the singer actually wrote an essay last year about the expedition she took to Antarctica to directly learn about the climate crisis, and even has credited that trip with inspiring her new album title — more on that below.

In the opening lines of “Solar Power,” which dropped on June 10, Lorde clearly lets fans know that this new era will be much more colorful than her dark “Melodrama” era. 

“I hate the winter, can't stand the cold/I tend to cancel all the plans/(So sorry, I can't make it)/But when the heat comes, something takes a hold,” she sings in the first verse. “Forget all of thе tears that you've cried/It's ovеr/It's a new state of mind,” she adds in the first chorus.

The lyrics to “Solar Power,” which was co-written and co-produced by Lorde and Jack Antonoff, celebrate the sun, nature, summer, and disconnecting from technology. (“And I throw my cellular device in the water,” she cheekily sings — though we’re sure Lorde would never actually litter e-waste in the ocean.)

In the music video, Lorde wears a deadstock satin two-piece outfit, made by sustainable fashion brand Collina Strada, and sunglasses by Karen Walker, as noted by Instagram account Lorde’s Closet.

In her newsletter to fans, Lorde tells fans that the album is: “a celebration of the natural world, an attempt at immortalizing the deep, transcendent feelings I have when I’m outdoors. In times of heartache, grief, deep love, or confusion, I look to the natural world for answers.”

She also gives a glimpse into what fans can expect from the new Lorde. “Her feet are bare at all times. She’s sexy, playful, feral, and free,” she wrote. “She’s a modern girl in a deadstock bikini, in touch with her past and her future, vibrating at the highest level when summer comes around. Her skin is glowing, her lovers are many.” Um, Lorde? We’re going to need the details on that deadstock bikini ASAP.

Lorde has yet to announce when the full “Solar Power” album will be released, but she does give one big clue in her newsletter: “You can look to the natural calendar for clues.” Because of that, and since the first single dropped the day of the solar eclipse, many fans are theorizing that the entire album will be released on June 21, the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. 

In December 2020, Lorde wrote an article for Rolling Stone about her February 2019 trip to Antarctica, where she went to learn about the climate crisis. “I had to see [Antarctica] before it was too late,” Lorde wrote, explaining that she’d been obsessed with Antarctica since childhood, but had been troubled for years by stories of how the climate crisis put the continent in danger.

“We’re attempting to pay off our predecessors’ environmental debts in the hazy hope that our descendants will thrive,” she wrote for the magazine. “It’s a lot to ask of a species hungry for faster and brighter gratification, less and less distance. But I understand it now, and I hope you find ways to as well. Great wonders like this are what’s at stake.”

Just a week after she published the Rolling Stone piece, Lorde revealed that the trip inspired the album title “Solar Power,” though she had yet to disclose the album name at that point. “I actually decided on the album name right around that trip,” she told New Zealand news outlet Newshub at the time. “Just coming back from that trip I thought, this is what it is.”

We can’t wait to spend all summer listening to “Solar Power” — and looking for Easter eggs about climate change in the lyrics.