All right, everyone, pack it in: the queen of underage overachievers has done it again. After a two-year-plus hiatus, Lorde is back on our minds and our radio stations with a brand-new single—and a hell of a video to match.
“Green Light”—a totally vicious breakup anthem off her sophomore album Melodrama, which will be released this summer—is Lorde’s first single since The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 standout “Yellow Flicker Beat” in 2014. Lorde has not released an album of her own since her blockbuster debut, Pure Heroine, in 2013.
For Lorde, writing “Green Light” was about finding joy in the pain of heartbreak. “You go through this thing and it’s so awful and you just wish you could let go. And the green light thing is like, I’m not okay right now but I’m gonna be okay. And that green light of finally being okay is gonna feel incredible,” said Lorde on #FVMZM. In an interview on Beats 1, she further explained why her gritty breakup single has such a buoyant sound: “This is that 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.”
If Twitter is any indication, it looks like we’re not the only ones losing our minds over the new video:
Lorde's Green Light video currently has 459,000 views and I'm pretty sure 458,999 of those are from me.
— Matt Weishaar (@MattWeishaar) March 2, 2017
Green Light by Lorde has singlehandedly ended the careers of F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Grinch, and stoplights
— Kenny (@kcox1002) March 2, 2017
me: i hate green
— armin (@urlbadman) March 1, 2017
lorde: my new single is called greenlight
me: pic.twitter.com/66vhiqOxkN
Welcome back, Lorde. We missed you.
Ting Ting Chen
Kyla Rain
Christiana Birch
Charlotte Entwistle