Way back in April, comedian and writer Joel Kim Booster tried to manifest something massive. “Lorde honey now is the time,” he tweeted, attempting to summon the pop star from the unofficial break she’s been taking since her Melodrama tour wrapped in late 2018. A month later, Booster’s plea seems like it might’ve worked — at least it terms of giving an update.
On Tuesday night (May 19), Lorde reemerged to give an important update to her fans via email, one that spans her current musical state of mind and is very good news for Booster and other fans. “I can tell you, this new thing,” she wrote, “it’s got its own colours now. If you know anything about my work, you’ll know what that means.” (Lorde’s got synesthesia, a condition that, in effect, allows her to associate certain colors with non-visual senses, including hearing music.)
This latest email is the first such dispatch since one in November 2019, in which she shared that she’d spent a portion of that year “working away on the new songs” and that she was dealing with the death of her dog, Pearl. Pearl comes up in this latest note, too, as does her grief about losing him. But it’s quite hopeful: After she allowed herself some time, she got back in the studio in December and “happy, playful things” emerged.
“I felt my melodic muscles flexing and strengthening,” she wrote, also mentioning Jack Antonoff — who helmed Melodrama with her — traveling to New Zealand to work with her, as well as the two of them working together in Los Angeles. They’re still working on it together via FaceTime during self-isolation.
Oh, and that music? “The work is so fucking good, my friend,” Lorde wrote. “I am truly jazzed for you to hear it.”
Elsewhere, the 23-year-old mentions how she had to take some time to re-center after her last tour in order to “make some food, grow some stuff, go to the beach a bunch, finally acknowledge (and kick) my social media addiction.” She’s also grown her hair quite long once again, perhaps even like it was in the Pure Heroine days.
“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 has also seen your pleas, and she gets it. But she’s asking you (and Joel Kim Booster) to be patient.
“I’ve been looking at some of your notes online, and I can feel the (extremely sweet, EXTREMELY flattering) desperation creeping back into your voices,” she wrote. “But as I get older I realise there’s something to be said for the pleasant feeling of waiting for something of quality to become available to you.” She likens it to baking bread or waiting for a package to arrive, celebrating the anticipation as a “delicious activity.”
Read Lorde’s note in full, as captured by a fan account, above. Then, see some of the fan reactions to her hopeful message below.
