What does grief sound like?

💿 In Lorde’s sophomore album Melodrama, each form and stage of grief gets the spotlight. From quiet moments of acceptance to unrelenting yet hopelessly futile rage, this is an album that is as raw and honest as it is indeed melodramatic.

**In this new monthly section of the Weekend Edition, we will shine the spotlight on an album or artist who has shaped or enriched the musical landscape as we know it. For our second installment, we’re revisiting an artist hailed by the greats as “ the future of music.”

The rise of a musical maven: Born in 1996 in Auckland, New Zealand, Ella Yelich-O’Connor — known by her stage name Lorde — first found her way to the spotlight in the fall of 2012 with her debut song (and instant classic), Royals — the lead single of her first album Pure Heroine. The then-16 year-old’s album was overwhelmingly positively received, earning wide acclaim for its mature storytelling and vocals.

Pure Heroine presented a take on pop that remained at the time unexperienced; mainstream music that spoke to the struggles of youth beyond school drama and failed summer flings. It was a coming of age album that dissected consumerism, class, and nostalgia from the perspective of a girl labeled by the masses as “too wise for her age.” The album’s release in September 2013 would see the industry changed for good, a feat acknowledged by the Grammys on its 10th anniversary.

There was fear that Pure Heroine would be a one-off success, and that the artist from Down Under had set a bar far too high for her nonchalant arms to reach — but that was not the case. On 2 March 2017 at the age of 19, Lorde would announce her sophomore album Melodrama, accompanied by lead single Green Light — a quick hit that quelled any doubts that the artist had lost her spark four years following her rise. The reviews were in: stellar, boisterous, triumphant, cathartic — all words used to describe the single. Three months later, the record would hit shelves all across the world.

Love, heartbreak, loss, and the liminal spaces in between. On first listen, you might find yourself wondering whether the album was released in 2025 or 1995 — it’s timeless in the sense that it does not restrict itself to cultural references the kind of which date a work. Melodrama is an amalgamation of sounds and feelings, incorporating influences from the ‘90s and early noughties, with the synth-pop sounds of the ‘80s and a hint of ‘70s pop rock, all while displaying masterful storytelling of a young woman navigating emotions unbound by a particular era — ones relatable to all strata of listeners.

What Melodrama offered was everything that made Pure Heroine the showstopper, amplified. It’s a tale told not in logical order, but the manner in which the turbulent waves of the mind operate: the feelings ebb and flow, unrestrained and unexpected — the same is true of the artist’s lyrical progression. Across 11 unskippable tracks, Lorde shows incredible maturity and self-awareness, even when fantasy is involved. She writes of the moment love unceremoniously ends in a car park in Hard Feelings/Loveless, how she plans to exact revenge from a treacherous lover by immortalizing him with her pen in Writer in the Dark, and what it means to retreat into one’s own mind in Perfect Places.

“Drenched in nostalgia,” Lorde’s early discography paints a feeling of “youth gone missing,” one YouTuber says. Through steady world-building that relies not necessarily on imagery but rather on the feelings said imagery evoke, Lorde primes her audience, beckoning them to lose themselves to the music — and consequently, the memories. In that regard, her songs serve not only as art meant to be admired, but art meant to be interacted with, critiqued, and compared to one’s own experiences.

While Melodrama may be Lorde’s crowning achievement and the likely reason her name will still be a mainstream mention decades from now, it may have — in a way — also been her bane. Her subsequent releases, Solar Power (2021) and Virgin (2025), saw the artist veer in a new direction — one that wasn’t as widely appreciated by devout listeners who yearned for another helping of the melodramatic. Which is to say, Lorde may have set the bar too high —but we’re still holding out hope for another worthy successor.

WHERE TO LISTEN- Melodrama is available to stream on all music platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify, Anghami, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music. For those among us with a penchant for physical media, you can get your hands on the album vinyl at Sherry’s Vinyl.