Lorde spends a good chunk of her new single “Liability” apologizing to her friends and family. The burned-out toybox of a track features Lorde delivering a ragged missive to the people around her who find keeping up with her celebrity lifestyle to be tiring.
She explained the reasoning behind the Melodrama track in an interview with Zane Lowe.
“I love the song so much and it feels so starkly truthful to me,” she said. “And I think everyone knows what that’s like, to just feel like a f*cking liability.”
She also revealed that the song was inspired by her own life (and a little bit of Rihanna).
“It’s interesting because I had this realization that because of my lifestyle and what I do for work there’s going to be a point with every single person around me where I’m gonna be attacks on them in some way. If it is having to give up a little portion of their privacy or their life becoming more difficult or whatever. It was just this moment of sadness and I remember it so vividly,” she said. “I was in this cab alone listening to “Higher” by Rihanna because ANTI had just come out. And I had a little cry and I was just like, ‘It’s always going to be this way, at some point with everyone it’s going to be this way.”
However, the song isn’t all wallowing, as the triumphant closing lyrics about flying into the sun can attest.
“But the song kind of ended up turning into a bit of a protective talismans for me,” she continued. “I was like, you know what, I’m always gonna have myself so I have to really nurture this relationship and feel good about hanging out with myself and loving myself. And the tone of the melody, the way it kind of falls around, it’s almost like it’s kind of drunk or it sort of leans around, it’s got this hip-hop cadence to it.”
Listen to it up top and check out her whole interview with Zane Lowe here. For more new Lorde, have a listen to the first single from Melodrama “Green Light.”
Lorde also revealed the release date for her Pure Heroine follow-up on Twitter. We can expect Melodrama on June 16.
