Lorde – “Hard Feelings/Loveless”

When I think of perfect pop, I think of Lorde – and more particularly, Melodrama.  For me, this was the album where it all came together for her.  The trap beats and finger-snaps of Pure Heroine were accented by colorful strings, brought to life by pop-rock rhythms, and in my opinion, supported by far superior lyricism.  It’s art pop reaching its absolute zenith, experimenting with Lorde’s original sound and seeing it flourish, all while retaining the marketability of a top 10 Billboard artist.

Another thing I think of when I hear Melodrama – or see Lorde’s gorgeous blue-scale painting on the cover – is vulnerability.  The entire record is centered around the thoughts that go on in our heads while we’re busy nodding and smiling at others — those soul-crushing feelings of heartbreak and defeat which we hide behind cool and collected exteriors while magnifying each interaction with the overinflated bombast of a Hollywood moment.  There’s a number of cuts here that exhibit this sensation in spades, but I don’t think any do it quite as well as “Hard Feelings/Loveless” – a before & after narrative that carries you through the crumbling demise of a relationship that used to mean the world to its narrator.

Lines like, “Let’s give it a minute before we admit that we’re through” and “I remember the rush, when forever was us” immediately plunge you into the honeymoon phase, where everything feels like it matters.  As the song progresses you can feel that aura take a dip into numbness, such as when she delicately sings “Now we sit in your car and our love is a ghost” or “I care for myself the way I used to care about you.”  It’s a rather bare song, supported by a gently swaying beat and aching synths, so Lorde’s words echo with tangible regret.  “It’s time to let go of this endless summer afternoon”, she writes, before working in a seemingly random memory about grocery shopping: “But I still remember everything, how we’d drift buying groceries, how you’d dance for me…I’ll start letting go of little things, ’til I’m so far away from you.”  Isn’t that how breakups work – these frail little puzzle pieces you tend to recall that could be as simple as a walk in the park, but that meant everything at one point in time?  Often when a relationship ends, it’s those stubborn little fragments that stick out like splinters; the absolute hardest memories to leave behind.

The second half of the song – “Loveless” – represents the flip side of the coin.  Here, that pre-relationship swagger has returned, and Lorde no longer finds herself concerned with what their complicated past meant.  The rhythm boasts fully-assured confidence, and Lorde taunts, “Bet you wanna rip my heart out, bet you wanna skip my calls now / Well guess what? I like that / ‘Cause I’m gonna mess your life up, gonna wanna tape my mouth shut.”  She concludes the song with a chanting mockery of “Generation L.O.V.E.L.E.S.S / All fuckin’ with our lover’s heads” – a sarcastic response to the notion-made-common that millennials have ruined love with casual dating and random hookups.

“Hard Feelings/Loveless” is a song that packs a broad spectrum of emotions and impactful storytelling into a relatively compact six minute window.  It’s amazing that someone as young (20 years at time of release) as Ella Yellich O’Connor – stage name Lorde – could have released something as boldly creative and moving as this.  It’s easy to write off mainstream pop as ear candy for mindless night club excursions, but Lorde has a different goal pegged.  Melodrama could be the best pop album of a generation, and that’s assuming she doesn’t find a way to top it herself.  “Hard Feelings/Loveless” is at the heart of Melodrama – depicting its thematic vulnerability with surprising clarity and poise.

An absolute classic.

Read more from this decade at my homepage for Sowing’s Songs of the Decade.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5JjmQsvmmmOBFnUjP7FLu4