Lorde fans, it’s time to head online and celebrate: the pop star has dropped a music video for The Path, a song from her new album Solar Power.
Though the song (and the rest of the album) has been out since August last year, the music video was released on the summer solstice, a year after she announced Solar Power was on its way.
Though it is not the first song in the album, rather the sixth, Lorde has said that it marks “the first chapter in the mystical ‘Solar Power’ story, a prequel to the title video.”
“You see my character joining her friends and family on the island where they’ve chosen to start life anew, arriving in her trademark suit and quickly being transformed by nature’s strange magic. I’m so proud of my buds for learning the dance in this one,” she added.
During the video, Lorde walks down a beach – the same one that features in her video for titular single Solar Power – and slowly sheds her grey suit for a summery yellow outfit.
As she passes through various campgrounds in the area, the residents of the beachside community join her in dance.
She also shared her views on the reception to her album– which received mixed reviews from critics.
“It’s been a year since I announced the release of ‘Solar Power.’ I can honestly say it has been the year with the highest highs and lowest lows I think I’ve ever experienced,” the singer wrote in her newsletter.
“It took people awhile to get the album — I still get emails every day from people who are just coming around to it now! — and that response was really confounding and at times painful to sit with at first.
“I learnt a ton about myself and how I’m perceived by making and releasing this album, and I feel significantly more connected and alive in my art practice and life than pretty much ever before. Sounds dry but it’s true!!!”
She added: “I was sitting with a friend recently drinking chai at a country house in England, she’s an artist too, and we got on to the topic of the album somehow. She said, ‘It’s clearly one of those works that gets made between peaks, the kind that’s necessary for makers sometimes, no less precious, in fact, there can’t be peaks at all without such works.’
“I think this is true of the record.”
Lorde is currently on tour to promote Solar Power, which is her third album and her first since 2017, when Melodrama was released.
“I thought I was going to make this big acid record but I don’t think it was an acid album,” she told the New York Times about the album.
“I had one bad acid experience in this album and was like meh, it’s a weed album. It’s one of my great weed albums.”
