I have collated a selection of Lorde lyrics as well as excerpts of Sophie’s analysis of the songs from the blog One Week One Band. All of these writings are what I’m going to let inform the videos I am making which will all be segmented but will hopefully be able to be pieced together almost like separate tracks all working together to make an album. While I know that there is far too much content here to logistically be able to film over the coming weeks, this is essentially my script.
Thematic intentions that run through all clips:
- Lorde’s music always makes me vaguely nostalgic, strangely wistful – half for the adolescence I’ve had and half for the adolescence Iknow I haven’t had.
- It’s not just about Teenagerhood (Teenagerhood in media, Teenagerhood in cultural memory, the capitals absolutely necessary) but also not simply aboutreally being a teenager; it exists in the strange space between the two, where experiences feel visceral and punchy and immediate even though they’re filed away as Iconic Memories long before they have any right to be looked back upon. It’s an album about navigating the liminal space between memory and immediacy, and I’m going to try and navigate that space this week.
Tennis Court
Don’t you think that it’s boring how people talk? // Making smart with their words again, well I’m bored // Because I’m doing this for the thrill of it, killin’ it
It’s a new art form showing people how little care (Yeah) // We’re so happy, even when we’re smilin’ out of fear
- she has a low, throaty alto that runs the gamut from wistfulness to disdain without cracking. But, still, she has this going for her: her deadpan is entirely purposeful.
- To listen to this album is to be considered, just for a moment, part of the omnipresent, inexplicably vital group of friends that Pure Heroine seems to be filled with
- I’m bored, too, I can feel how sick I am of it suffocating me now that she’s laid it down on the table.
- There iswant, here, already – wanting a million things, chasing them, wanting too much.
- Her voice, normally so low and firm, reaches to the end of happy, stretches for just a moment, elastic and strange. An admission, then: terror overlaid with giddy delight. It’s not that you swallow your fear; your fear lives with your joy. You grin and smiling is mostly bared teeth anyway, anyway, vicious and half-hysterical. So happy and so terrified you’re a tiny feral creature, barely a person anymore
400 Lux
We’re never done with killing time // Can I kill it with you?
We come around here all the time // Got a lot to not do, let me kill it with you
We’re hollow like the bottles, that we drain // You drape your wrists over the steering wheel // Pulses can drive from here // We might be hollow, but we’re brave
(And I like you) // I love these roads where the houses don’t change (and I like you) // Where we can talk like there’s something to say (and I like you) // I’m glad that we stopped kissing the tar on the highway (and I like you) // We move in the tree streets // I’d like it if you stayed
Ribs:
My mum and dad let me stay home // It drives you crazy, getting old
And I’ve never felt more alone // It feels so scary, getting old
You’re the only friend I need // Sharing beds like little kids // Laughing ’til our ribs get tough // But that will never be enough
- I was 15 and felt like I could see the whole huge inconceivably vast future stretching out in front of me.
- This song makes me feel scared shitless, but this song also makes me feel like maybe there’s nothing wrong with banishing self-destructive thoughts because living in them might make for an ugly memory someday.
Team:
We live in cities you’ll never see onscreen // Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things //
Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things // Livin’ in ruins of a palace within my dreams // And you know we’re on each other’s team
- Why would that be an accident, the way that certainty mixes with the steady beat that underlays the whole song, like a heartbeat.You know we’re on each others team, and you know, and you know, and you know. This song used to come on the radio all the time and I used to drive to school with it playing and feel, for a moment, like part of something – something bigger, something smaller. We’re on each others team, and youknow. To listen to this album is to be a “you”. To listen to this album is to be absorbed into the multitracked layers of Lorde’s voice, a group of friends gathered around, saying hey, hey. It’s not pretty here, we’re not always pretty, but it doesn’t matter. We contain things too big for anyone but us to understand, cities you’ll never see on screen.
We are myths that only we can write.
Bravado:
- My heart jumps around when it’s alluded to / this will not do.You’re scared of something and you’ve decided you’re done being scared. You’re scared of something and you can’t change that thing but you can change yourself – and it might not be right and it might not be easy but you can build yourself a shell of armor
- You teach yourself to be someone who can survive in the shape of the world. It’s hard and sometimes it’s necessary, to fake not just wholeness but glory.
Still Sane:
- “Still Sane” opens with terror and ends with you still teetering on the edge of being something, not quite there yet, never quite there yet.
- Loneliness and want, things that are always inextricably intertwined but rear their head here in a different configuration. You are lonely and it is inevitable and impenetrable. You are lonely and you mustbe lonely. All work and no play never made me lose it but it almost did. It always almost does.
- This album is filled with groups of people. You’re never supposed to be alone and then “Still Sane” comes along and you are.
- This album is filled with hungry, keening need that youknow is wrong, need for your friends and need for hands on you and need for quiet. This song is that need filtered through a spectrum of things that feel bigger, even if they aren’t
White Teeth Teens:
- “White Teeth Teens” is, on the surface, about cliques – really, though, it’s about all the strange things we do to get people to be with us.
- The passage of time is blurred and hazy here; things switch back and forth from present to past from one stanza to the next.
A World Alone:
- “A World Alone” is the culmination of everything that makes this album interesting, and messy, and a little bit ridiculous. Pure Heroine sits uneasily in the space between experiencing something with your whole heart and knowing that what you feel won’t last forever.
- “A World Alone” exists as the culmination of an album’s worth of tensions: being vs remembering, fake friends vs. real friends, what becomes too much vs. that which isn’t enough; teenagerhood vs. Teenagerhood. “A World Alone” is a small song. It’s intimate. It’s Lorde and one person, one “you”. People are talking but they don’t matter. People are talking but something about locking eyes with this one person send you somewhere else.
- This album lives in the space between those vibrations, not the first second where you just feel like your teeth are shaking out of your skull, but right after, where the feeling isn’t dulled but where you can step back and say – wait.