Lorde’s much-anticipated fourth album, “Virgin,” came out this summer, garnering lots of positive reviews. And while I loved the new album’s stark lyricism and minimalistic sound, I kept going back to her debut album from over a decade ago, released when Lorde was younger than I am.
To be completely honest, I was not always a Lorde fan. While my friends were obsessed with her in high school, I thought her music was too angsty. This summer, I changed my mind. I happened to find the “Pure Heroine” CD my mom bought years ago in my car, and as I listened to it again and again during long evening car rides, I realized I have been missing out. I discovered what the millions of people who already love this album presumably already know: It is incredibly good. Duh. More specifically, I no longer think the album is too angsty. What it actually does is voice the idiosyncratic emotions of modern young adulthood painstakingly well: fragile nonchalance, irreverent earnestness and unexplainable yearning for something you cannot yet name. To me, “Pure Heroine” is an unfiltered account of the adolescent experience as it actually happens rather than what it is supposed to be.
The first song, “Tennis Court,” demonstrates some of this emotional vulnerability. The verses contain vulnerable, poetic reflections, like “Pretty soon I’ll be gettin’ on my first plane / I’ll see the veins of my city like they do in space.” Then, the chorus is filled with brash and rebellious declarations like “It’s a new art form, showin’ people how little we care.” Lorde’s persona refuses to linger on one subject or emotion—life and thoughts move too quickly for that.
Another example is the chorus of the hit “Royals,” which begins with the proclamation “We’ll never be royals” and ends with Lorde instructing, or maybe pleading for us to “Let me be your ruler…Let me live that fantasy.” Lorde does not want to “fit in” and pretend not to not be alienated by much of the dominant pop culture around her, but she does want to belong somewhere. Through her deliberately contrasting lyrics, Lorde narrates the experience of navigating labels, cliques and self-identity in a fresh-feeling way.
One of my favorite parts of the album is that many of the songs speak from the perspective of a larger friend group, inviting the listener into a sense of camaraderie and group identity. For example, in “Team,” she sings, “We live in cities you’ll never see on-screen…And you know, we’re on each other’s team.” This beautifully portrays how the friend group is the dominant social unit of teenage life, despite sometimes being boring or drama-filled.
Of course, Lorde also gives more bittersweet emotions the same treatment. “Ribs” is filled with specific examples of these moments—feeling alone while surrounded by people having fun, or realizing that the memory of a happy moment will not compare to the reality while being in that moment. I cannot pick a specific lyric because they are truly all so good. The world she sings about is consciously impermanent, but still valuable and meaningful. In the last song, “A World Alone,” Lorde concludes by recognizing that the world of the album is impermanent, but still valuable and meaningful. She sings “I know we’re not everlasting” but still, “You’re my best friend and we’re dancing in the world alone.”
I do not just like this album because I think the music is relatable today. The album was clearly written in a cultural moment between the present-day media landscape of social media and individual algorithms, and what I imagine had to be a simpler time, when you did not have to decide whether to post an Instagram photo dump for the month. Media and pop culture definitely do have a presence in the album. For example, in “Buzzcut Season,” which is probably my favorite song, Lorde contrasts watching faraway violence on TV to relaxing in a pool in a way that makes this everyday hypocrisy obvious without explicitly saying it. However, I think its distance from the present is why “Pure Heroine” stands out to me from its era: It creates an opportunity to reflect on the bittersweet past without transferring the shame of its awkward and cringe-inducing moments to the current moment.
Sometimes I feel like I should constantly be listening to new music and looking for the next new thing. This album reminded me that there is just as much meaning and beauty in the old.