Is Lorde My FBI Agent?
How does Lorde always know to release music when I'm going through a major life change? It's getting weird....
My favorite thing about music is the way it can be tied to specific moments in your life and act as a soundtrack. I think back to being five years old and running my copies of Nelly Furtado’s 'Woah Nelly’ and Beyoncé’s ‘Dangerously In Love’ into the ground, or being a teenager and Miley Cyrus’ 'Breakout’ being on a constant loop, but throughout my life, I’ve found that one artist in particular always releases her albums in tandem with my major life events: Lorde.
I first discovered Lorde during my freshman year of college when I came across ‘Royals’ on Tumblr (I know, how cliché) and was instantly hooked. I downloaded her Love Club EP and the rest is history.
I had never heard music like ‘Biting Down’ or ‘Million Dollar Bills’. The best way to describe it is that it felt like a sonic itch in my brain was finally being scratched. It just felt right and I needed more. Luckily enough, she was gearing up to release her debut album ‘Pure Heroine’ in just ten days.
As a freshman in college who stayed home and commuted to his local community college (go sharks!) because he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life yet, I felt like the only person in my friend group still living in their hometown after high school. This was incredibly false and a very dramatic mindset to have, but I was an 18-year-old boy figuring out his life and his sexuality all at once so EVERYTHING was the end of the world to me, okay?
I listened to ‘Pure Heroine’ alone in my room on my 2013 Macbook Pro that I spent all of my graduation money on, and I remember feeling a strange sense of comfort through what I was hearing. At the time, I was living with my grandparents to be closer to college and staying in their guest bedroom. I had the room to myself, but it wasn’t my room. The walls had all of my grandma’s photos on them and my bed was sandwiched between two wood-stained cabinets that were filled with tchotchkes my grandparents had collected over the years. Nothing about this bedroom made it Andrew’s Room except for the fact that I was sleeping in it every night.
The sirens in the introduction of ‘400 Lux’ filled my empty room and suddenly I wasn’t alone in a room that wasn’t mine. Much like everyone else, I felt nostalgic while listening to ‘Ribs’ thinking about the difference between high school and college. There was something so serendipitous about this album ending with a song called ‘A World Alone’ when that was exactly how I was feeling at the time. I remember feeling such a range of emotions listening to this album, an album that’s all about figuring out who you are in your teen years and feeling lost despite knowing the streets you’re driving down like the back of your hand. It soon became the soundtrack to my freshman year of college and the next four years of my life.
Flash forward to 2017: I’m in my fourth year of college, but it’s not my senior year. I’ve finally found some footing and figured out what I wanted to do with my life (kinda). I’m still living on Long Island but now with my boyfriend at the time but that will soon come to an end - thank god. I spent 19-22 in and out of this incredibly toxic relationship. It was manipulative and abusive in every sense of the word but as a young gay, it was a relationship and I thought I had to stay. Spoiler alert: you never have to stay. I moved out of our apartment in October 2016 and couch-hopped through my friends and family’s homes for the next four months, with all of my personal belongings in the back of my 2006 Jeep Liberty.
On February 15th, 2017 I moved into a room in a house I found on Craigslist. Lucky for me, my roommates became some of my best friends and I found myself in that house. I had a room that was mine. I could be my true self again after being suffocated by a partner who projected his insecurities onto me and in return, dulled my shine.
On March 2nd, 2017 Lorde released her comeback single ‘Green Light’. Just fifteen days after I finally took the initiative and left an incredibly toxic situation and finally started living my life for me again, this artist who served as the soundtrack to my life in the last major transitional period I went through was releasing a song that was all about needing the green light to get out of a situation, even if it means moving into a house you found on Craigslist. This was my green light.
Lorde was announced as the headliner for Gov Ball that year and I immediately bought a ticket. I had been dying to see her for years and this just felt right. The day before Gov Ball she released the second single from her upcoming album ‘Perfect Places’. As someone who had just moved into a house, I didn’t know, in a new town, and was figuring out what it meant to have a “home”, this song immediately became an all-time favorite and to this day stands as my favorite song of all time. I watched Lorde perform at Gov Ball with a friend I knew from high school and it was truly a life-changing experience. I left that set and called my friend Casey to tell her I needed to get a Melodrama tattoo. So what did I do? I got ‘Melodrama’ tattooed on my ankle as the album dropped at midnight. I knew this album was going to leave a mark on me and that it did.
I ended up meeting Lorde for the first time during the Melodrama era. I went to eight shows on the Melodrama World Tour (one in which she wished me a happy birthday) and truly found myself through this album. Melodrama FOR. EVER.
Four years went by, we lived through a global pandemic and my life was getting ready to change again. I realized I needed to finally make the jump and follow my childhood dreams of moving to Manhattan.
Me and my two best friends (Ashley and Jaclyn) had all dreamt of living in NYC together and living out our Sex and the City fantasy. The two of them moved to NYC for college and had moved around since, but I was the last one to leap - so what better way than by finding a two-bedroom shoe box apartment with Jaclyn!? We started applying for apartments and got accepted to move into an apartment on the Upper East Side. My life was about to dramatically change once again so you know what that means: Lorde must be releasing new music. Our lease started on May 15th and Lorde released her comeback single, Solar Power, on June 21st - 27 days later.
While all of this is happening, I meet a cute boy at work and think “Is it time for me to start dating again?" I can’t possibly start dating someone on Long Island when I’m moving to the city in just a few months, right!?” After my last relationship being so controlling and toxic, how was I supposed to just start dating again?
Lorde announced her third studio album will be coming out on August 20th, 2021. I spent release day seeing her at GMA, meeting her at Rough Trade, and ended the night on a second date with said cute boy from work and now we’ll be celebrating our four-year anniversary on August 20th, 2025.
I found myself resonating with lyrics like ‘Come on and let the bliss begin’ and ‘Let’s hope the sun will show us the path’ because I was finally allowing myself to live in bliss. I moved to my dream city with my best friend, I met the love of my life, and once again: my life was going through a major change with a brand new Lorde album to soundtrack it.
Now we’re in 2025. I turned 30 on April 6th. Got laid off from my job on April 8th. Lorde teased her comeback single ‘What Was That’ on April 9th.
I kid you not, as I typed that last sentence she just announced ‘What Was That’ is coming out at midnight - screenshots below for proof because I cannot make this up.
I don’t know how she always knows to release her albums when I’m having a major life change, but I hope it never stops. All of that being said, I’m so ready for this next chapter in my life and am thrilled to have a new Lorde single and album to soundtrack this next phase.
Lorde forever.