“It showed me that you have no choice but to be who you’re supposed to be”
Lorde has looked back at her ‘Solar Power’ album, and said that it made her realise that it didn’t quite fit in with who she is.
The Kiwi singer opened up about the record during a new interview on Therapuss with Jake Shane. In the discussion, she looked back at how she came to make the album after feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the tour for its predecessor, 2017’s Melodrama’.
“It was also so crazy touring ‘Melodrama’. I found it very intense for that whole time to be in this endless hardcore music [atmosphere] every night,” she said. “I found it pretty intense and I just wanted something light and easy after that. It was cool.”
Explaining how that led to her seeking a more stripped-back approach in the 2021 record, Lorde then admitted that she came to realise the sound captured in ‘Solar Power’ didn’t fully represent who she was.
“I love ‘Solar Power’ so much, and I truly needed to make it,” she shared. “I wouldn’t be here with another album if I hadn’t made ‘Solar Power’. But it showed me that you have no choice but to be who you’re supposed to be.
“Me disappearing and being all wafty… I was like ‘actually, I don’t think this is me.’”
Speaking to NME about the 2021 album, Lorde – whose real name is Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor – explained that it was inspired after a trip to Antarctica.
During the visit in 2019, she learnt about the science being used there to help understand climate change, and went on helicopter rides to look for whales.
Sharing how this inspired the sound of the record, she explained: “I came back really sure my focus had to be on the outside and what was happening there. It was so, so fascinating to me and so inspiring in a way that my phone had stopped being, celebrity culture had stopped being and popular culture had stopped being.”
“I guess that was part of why I stepped back from consuming the internet in a really consistent way – I wanted to know what I would make when I wasn’t dialled into what everyone else was making,” she added. “One of the things that starts to happen when you have any sort of community is you start to move as one, in a way. I honestly don’t think I could have achieved this if I tried four years ago, just because [I was in] the whirlpool.”
In a recent in-depth interview with Rolling Stone, the ‘Ribs’ singer opened up about her gender evolution and how she explores it in the LP. “My gender got way more expansive when I gave my body more room,” she said, before explaining that the opening line of the first track on ‘Virgin’ – “Some days I’m a woman/Some days I’m a man” – reflects her current headspace in terms of gender fluidity.
“[Chappell Roan] asked me this. She was like, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’ And I was like, ‘I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.’ I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but there’s a part of me that is really resistant to boxing it up,” she said.
Earlier on Friday, Jan. 30, news reports announced an upcoming Netflix documentary exploring the early years and success of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the impact of the band’s original guitarist Hillel Slovak, who died in 1988 of an accidental heroin overdose.
Directed by Ben Feldman, Variety reported that The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers includes input from members Anthony Kiedis and Flea and is set to premiere on March 20. “At its heart, this is a deeply relatable story — about the friendships that shape our identities and the lasting power of the bonds forged in adolescence,” Feldman said in a statement at the time. “What’s less relatable, of course, is that here those friends went on to create one of the greatest rock bands in history. I’m profoundly grateful to the band and to Hillel’s family for their trust and generosity, and to Netflix for helping bring this story to the world stage.”
However, following the announcement, the band later released their own statement distancing themselves from the project. “About a year ago, we were asked to be interviewed for a documentary about Hillel Slovak. He was a founding member of the group, a great guitarist, and friend. We agreed to be interviewed out of love and respect for Hillel and his memory,” wrote the band in a post shared on social media. “However, this documentary is now being advertised as a Red Hot Chili Peppers documentary, which it is not,” they clarified. “We had nothing to do with it creatively. We have yet to make a Red Hot Chili Peppers documentary. The central subject of this current Netflix special is Hillel Slovak and we hope it sparks interest in his work.”
The group originally encompassed Slovak, Kiedis, Flea, and drummer Jack Irons. It has since gone through several iterations following Slovak’s tragic death, with Irons leaving the group soon after.
