The mega-selling New Zealand pop singer-songwriter and former teen sensation of the hit single Royals, returns with her fourth LP, one that, unlike 2021’s Solar Power, harks back more to the teen partying themes 2017’s Melodrama, but dealt with from a late-20s angle of different angst, added promiscuity, pills and uncertainty. Oddball electronics and effects (the producer is American Jim-E Stack) also infuse the banging beats and power ballads. Man of the Year is full of noisy staccato bursts, awash with distortion, and plays on and parodies the GQ magazine award of masculinity, a side that Lorde also considers within her own behaviour, but with a hint of heartbreak too. And there’s plenty of sexual energy, amphetamine-fuelled energy, visceral detail aplenty here, as well as wordplay, such as on the flirtily sensual opener Hammer: “There's a heat in the pavement, my mercury's raising/ Don't know if it's love or if it's ovulation/ When you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail/ The mist from the fountain is kissing my neck … It's a beautiful life, so why play truant? I jerk tears and they pay me to do it ..” What Was That reflects on a passing relationship, and compares it to the high of taking MDMA: “MDMA in the back garden, blow our pupils up / We kissed for hours straight, well, baby, what was that?” Current Affairs describes a sexual encounter in the context of watching a solar eclipse. “You're in the light, then you're in the dark / Then someone throws a flare / You tasted my underwear / I knew we were fucked.” Lorde remains a huge big-selling star in this latest release of high-production pop bangers with certain musical twists, but there’s a loneliness unchained here, and as she sings repeatedly on the final track, David, “Am I ever gonna love again?”. Out on Universal.
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