Lorde Opens Up About The 'Painful' Initial Response To 'Solar Power'

Lorde opened up about the public's response to her 2021 album Solar Power in a recent email newsletter sent to fans. The "Royals" singer described the initial response as "really confounding" and "painful to sit with."

Solar Power had a different sound and feel than Lorde's previous work and was the follow-up to her 2017 fan-favorite album Melodrama. “It’s been a year since I announced the release of Solar Power. I can honestly say it has been the year with the highest highs and lowest lows I think I’ve ever experienced," she wrote. "It took people awhile to get the album — I still get emails every day from people who are just coming around to it now! — and that response was really confounding and at times painful to sit with at first. I learnt a ton about myself and how I’m perceived by making and releasing this album, and I feel significantly more connected and alive in my art practice and life than pretty much ever before. Sounds dry but it’s true!!!”

Later in the newsletter, she recalled a moment when her friend described the album as one “that gets made between peaks." She added that the album is "the kind that’s necessary for makers sometimes, no less precious, in fact, there can’t be peaks at all without such works." Lorde is currently on tour for the album, where at one stop she did a cover of a The Strokes track.

Read the full message below.