Our piping hot first reactions to Lorde's brand new single ‘What Was That'
It's been a thrilling few weeks of breadcrumbing for Lorde fans, as the New Zealand popstar has been teasing her return to the zeitgeist through mysterious silver duct tape on her shoes, rainbow water bottles and long-winded voice notes. Having not released any music since Solar Power in 2021, aside from her bitch-walk remix of Charli XCX's 'girl, so confusing', Lorde has stayed out of the limelight, dropping in only for the occasional cryptic post or newsletter.
Today, that all ends. At 4pm Friday NZT she released her brand new single 'What Was That', and here are our piping hot reactions.
Madeleine Chapman
Disclaimer: My excitement for this single, which reached its peak immediately after the strutting TikTok teaser of two weeks ago, dipped significantly yesterday after watching a video of Lorde 'performing' the full song in Washington Square Park. After teasing an appearance that then was shut down by police before she'd even arrived, I thought Lorde was a genius. Thousands of people flocked to the park, posted about the new single, and thanks to police intervention, there were news write ups about it. Meanwhile, producer Dev Hynes (himself a revered musician) walked through the park with a speaker, playing the song as fans danced. What a smart and effective marketing move, I thought, and all the while she never had to appear.
Then she actually showed up! And didn't perform the song but played it and danced to it while fans watched??? It catapulted me back to the 'shhhh' clips from the Melodrama tour and made me nervous for some reason.
HUGE AND IMMEDIATE CORRECTION: Egg immediately on my face because I wrote that half an hour ago and Lorde's lip syncing at the park is in fact a stunning, Truman Show twist to end the music video. The music video really makes it, in my humble opinion. I am too ignorant about sound production to say more than 'I like this' when listening alone but I'm very into the handycam, early Youtube look of her music video. Big budgets are out (for many reasons) and cheapo aesthetics are in. She hasn't gone that way before – even her early music videos were sleek and narrative.
But walking and cycling through rainy New York and then lip syncing to your own song with fans in some sort of Lordeception grotty home video? Yes. This album is going to be the messy break up album of our dreams. Also a testament to how hectic and fast-moving you have to be to get any publicity traction these days (sad).
Releasing pop music after brat summer must be terrifying for every marketing department at every label but so far so fresh from Lorde. We're gonna be seeing a lot of electrical tape on Doc Martens (we love an affordable trend) and a real 'who gives a shit' attitude which is frankly appropriate. I can't wait to be shoulder checked by the skinniest young women in Auckland while trying to get a Sal's pizza on K Road.
On to the actual song, I am a child of the 'hey!' era so you know I'm absolutely frothing the random shouts in this one.
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
Who amongst us hasn't done MDMA with a dude they really liked, kissed for hours and thought 'this is the best cigarette of my life' … (not I, for legal reasons). Drugs in the back garden, blown up pupils, moving through a veil of smoke – I fear Lorde is officially so, so, so back, and without a Jack Antonoff credit, you're reminded this has always been her sound.
I love Lorde because she always meets me where I'm at, and God can I relate to thinking 'what was that?' after having your heart completely ripped apart. I hope the return to her Melodrama era (this vibes like a sad 'Supercut' and a more dismissive 'Hard Feelings', and Melodrama was supposed to be her MDMA album) wasn't inspired by the Solar Power fallout, because I stand 10 toes down on that being a perfect record. But Melodrama was masterful, and a sad club banger (see: Charli XCX's 'party 4 u' and Robyn's 'Dancing On My Own') is always welcomed by the youth, especially post-Brat summer. According to my calendar, we are now officially in Lorde autumn, and I look forward to blasting this song through my headphones on the solo Uber ride home from the bar where the dude you really hoped would show up, didn't.
Alex Casey
Okay, I listened to the song twice and my heart was instantly hurting. The departure from the easy breezy 'I'm kinda like a prettier Jesus' confidence of Solar Power to this poor dear covering up the mirrors – 'I can't see myself yet' – is genuinely crushing, and those moments of pin drop silence between 'I'm missing you… I'm missing you' speak loudly of a heart split clean in two. When the chorus thumps in and hurtles us back to the memories of MDMA in the back garden etc, I was thinking a lot about the wild and fluorescent vignettes of 'Supercut'.
It was on my third listen when I realised there was a also fucking MUSIC VIDEO and my brain leaked out my ears. Aside from the thrillingly fast 48 hour film competition turnover from Lorde's drone department here, this is such an interesting spiritual sequel to the 'Green Light' video (if we're considering this break-up album Melodrama II, which we are). Both show her traipsing through New York City in a state of heartbreak, but 'What Was That' feels less cinematic so much more raw, a pain that runs as deep and toxic as an actual literal sewer that she crawls out of.
But where 'Green Light' ends with Lorde alone on a bridge, possibly at dusk but more likely at dawn, 'What Was That' concludes with her belting the already-viral hammer of the song – 'when I was 17, I gave you everything, now we wake from a dream, well baby what was that' – late at night with a crowd of thousands of fellow New Yorkers who have spontaneously gathered to see her. Whatever is coming next, she's got a bloody army behind her, and I for one will be physically restraining myself from purchasing a Lorde theme charm belt when they become available.
Gabi Lardies
An uplifting coming-of-age pop song! Lorde has given the world just what we need, a bit of reminiscing, a bit of nostalgia and a bit of mystery, since no one I've chatted to can quite decipher half the lyrics. The song takes a while to warm up, but where it goes is very, very high. Some might call it an emotional journey. I would say it's blown the weird silky spider webs of Solar Power off and Lorde is heading back to Melodrama territory.
Although recently I've been feeling like Lorde has betrayed little old New Zealand – where was her surprise and highly expected appearance at Laneway?! – it seems you can't take New Zealand out of the girl. The music video has many number eight wire qualities: being filmed at a party where the cops turned up, being finished the very next day, shoes held together by tape, riding a non-electric bike without a helmet, wearing a bikini under jeans, etc, etc. Always nice to feel like a pop star is DTE (down to Earth).
Alice Neville
When I first listened I thought I found the song a bit meh, but now it's stuck in my head, which is a sign that it may in fact grow on me. I like the 'wearing smoke like a wedding veil line' but should Lorde really be singing about smoking the best cigarette of her life, or any cigarette, for that matter? MDMA in the back garden is fine, riding a bike without a helmet is fine, but do not get me started on cigarettes, those things are bad. Also, why does she have tape around one of her shoes?
Jin Fellet
My immediate reaction when watching the video was 'oh she's wearing the same outfit from her Washington Square Park appearance' and then I realised this all happened on the same day, and it makes more sense that the appearance was for the music video. I have been listening to Melodrama over the past week in anticipation of the new release, and on the full first listen, I can say I am a fan. I can imagine myself with a glass of wine, dancing alone to this in my living room. Welcome back Lorde.
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But in the same verse, Lorde shows her awareness of both women's function on the market: People say we're alike They say we've got the same hair It's you and me on the coin The industry loves to spend This knowing wink to how women move within the pop-culture marketplace produces a different kind of purity, one based on an intimacy between the popstar and her listeners. We all know Lorde's difference from Charli is about image: the 'poet' versus the party girl. Intimacy as purity is part of what cultural theorist Anna Kornbluh recently dubbed the pressure of 'immediacy', characterised by an apparently ceaseless flow and demand to constantly share images and video of our bodies, afforded by the scroll of social media. While the depiction of our bodies and selves on screens is fundamental to this moment, according to Kornbluh, we contradictorily lose sight of this screening. Feeling as though we are #NoFilter – present and real. Key to this is the exhibition of our feelings and emotions. For all women, but particularly those in the public eye, the sharing of these feelings materialise into 'coin'. Vulnerability, pleasure, all-the-feels-all-the-time – especially for women – make 'bank'. Intimacy and knowingness Vulnerability has been a catch-cry in media characterisations of Virgin. Critics and fans equate Lorde's lyrical confessions and press tour patter with a market-valuable 'purity', equated with immediate access (to quote the YouTube fan above) to a 'true-to-self' Lorde. One of her more amusing (but fitting) press engagements was on Bella Freud's Fashion Neurosis podcast. On the couch, we hear Lorde, wearing a Yohji Yamamoto blazer, musing about vulnerability, gender and her mother – with the great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. Fashion Neurosis: Lorde on the psychiatrist's couch. While the Charli XCX track shows Lorde's intimacy through her knowingness about her role as 'coin' for the music industry, the music videos from Virgin offer a more embodied intimacy. The clip for the album's first single, ' What Was That? ', features an extreme closeup inside her mouth. The album cover itself is an X-ray showing her hips and her IUD. Kornbluh suggests this emphasis on often literal bodily interiors – people's 'insides' – produces an ersatz sense of closeness and sociality, as our relationships become more and more beholden to the alienating circuits of 'social' media. Virgin does not lie. It traces a truth of our times – a paradoxical truth – that we are at our most intimate, our most pure, when we are unmediated, all the while bearing out the imperative to 'Describe the vibe' – to mediate and expose ourselves onscreen. My own vibe check? I love the album. It is pop at its purest – performative, playful and certainly worth paying attention to.
