Single Review: Lorde – Green Light

Lorde returns with proper big pop tune
New Zealand pop star Lorde took the world by storm in 2013 when her single ‘Royals’ grew out to be an enormous hit. She immediately became an international sensation and launched her debut record Pure Heroine when she was just 17 years old. The record brought us hits like ‘Tennis Court’ and ‘Team’ and a year later she took control of the soundtrack of the third Hunger Games movie, releasing ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ as a single. That is the last new music we heard from Ella Yelich O’Connor. As she took her sweet time to release new material we waited and waited, but today is the day that wait is over. Lorde just dropped her brand new single ‘Green Light’, the first single taken from her upcoming sophomore album.

If anything, ‘Green Light’ is going to make her a bigger pop star than she already is, because this sounds massive and like an absolute hit without trying to hard. It is more upbeat than most of her output to date and is driven by a piano rhythm over a beat that fully explodes over the chorus. The song, co-written by Lorde herself, Jack Antonoff and long term collaborator Joel Little, deals with her first major heartbreak, written from the perspective of the “drunk girl at the party dancing around crying about her ex-boyfriend who everyone thinks is a mess. That’s her tonight and tomorrow she starts to rebuild”, Lorde explained to Zane Lowe in Beats 1. Amazing!

‘Green Light’ is overloaded with excellent hooks from the verses to the pre-chorus and then of course the chorus itself. The production is by Lorde, Antonoff and Frank Dukes and especially that instrumental outro is going to fill the dancefloors for sure. Lorde reinvented her sound into a more danceable direction, but still sounds absolutely unique, with her characteristic deep vocal style. Her album Melodrama will be released in summer and it might be the most exciting campaign of the year so far!

Lorde also dropped the video for the track featuring her strutting the streets at night in pink while also letting her hair dance in the wind while sticking her head out of the window of a car. Of course she busts some signature moves and the mirror scenes are pretty stunning too!

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