She’s back! Lorde returned to the spotlight to tease her upcoming third album and update fans on what she has been up to since the 2017 release of Melodrama.
“Well hello there. I realised the other day it had been a minute since we chatted, and I was missing you,” the singer-songwriter, 23, wrote in an email to fans on Tuesday, May 19. “Do you wear your hair long or short now? Did you take your piercings out? You’ll probably be pleased to know my hair is big and long again. I think after Melodrama came out I said I wouldn’t put out another record until my hair was long— both because hair takes time to grow, and I knew I needed time, and because I knew the next record would require the longest and wildest hair yet.”
Lorde (real name Ella Yelich-O’Connor) revealed that she “started going back to the studio again” in December 2019 to keep herself busy, and she ended up making “happy, playful” music.
“I felt my melodic muscles flexing and strengthening. Jack [Antonoff] came over to work in the studio in Auckland, and I went to LA. It flowed,” she wrote. “A thing started to take shape. And then, of course, the world shut down. We’re still working away — Jack and I FaceTimed for over an hour this morning going over everything. But it’ll take a while longer.”
Although the COVID-19 pandemic altered the Grammy winner’s plans, she teased that her next album “is so f–king good,” adding, “I am truly jazzed for you to hear it.”
Lorde told fans that her native New Zealand is “creeping back to normal” amid the global crisis. She noted that “shops and restaurants are open again” and she has been able to hang out with some of her friends.
“I feel so grateful for such calm, sensible leadership by our government, now more than ever,” she continued. “I know you may not be afforded that where you live, and I hope you’re taking it one day at a time and trying not to feel too destroyed by the news. I’m thinking of you all the time.”
The “Royals” songstress also teased her plans to go on tour once her next album is ready and she is able to safely get back on the road.
“I knew I needed a break from touring at the end of the last cycle. I was finding the combination of the brutal stage fright and having no fixed home and no connection with what I ate or where I lived extremely grim,” she wrote. “But I know now how excited I am to get back out there. I want to be playing festivals again — hearing my intro music, watching the band walk onstage. … Who knows when it’ll be safe to do those things, but I’m craving them, and I wanted you to know.”
Lorde’s as-yet-untitled third album will be the follow-up to 2013’s Pure Heroine and 2017’s Melodrama, the latter of which received an Album of the Year nomination at the Grammys.
