What Was That

One of the first words that comes to mind for me when describing Lorde’s songwriting is clarity. It’s a trait that allows her to zoom into the tiniest details, then back outward to deliver soul-baring maxims. Think back to 2017’s “Green Light”: it starts with makeup hastily done in a friend’s car post-breakup, and lights up with the gleeful proclamation of “brand new sounds in my mind.” The depth of one’s feelings set against the banality of youth–many a Lorde song thrives on this intoxicating tension.

I’m interested in “What Was That,” the first tease from Lorde’s 4th studio album, because it doesn’t quite employ this maneuver. Like “Green Light,” the track finds her reeling from a breakup, but instead of parting the storm clouds in search of the future, the song dives further into the murk of the past. In other words, “What Was That” doesn’t zoom out–it zooms further in. In its desperate lunge of a chorus, Lorde rushes after fading memories of “MDMA in the back garden” and “the best cigarette of my life.” Her songwriting is as vivid and deliciously wonky as ever.

The weird part: it embraces messiness in a way that Lorde has never gone. She’s practically gasping at times, a performance dramatized by spare, demo-like electronics. The chorus’s off-kilter rhythm regains balance only to careen into a streaky synth solo. In the next verse–which is inexplicably lengthened–she spins out into a skyward shout, and then the song plunges down once again. Some of these moves work because they’re legitimately great: that chorus is her best in years. Some of them are thrilling simply because they’re erratic. “What Was That” lacks the coherence of a great pop song, if it’s trying to be one at all. But as it rushes forward and retreats, loses and regains its balance, it moves toward a convincingly chaotic portrait of a breakup. Messiness, in this case, is her truth. One might call that clarity.