Lorde
It might be time to re-think your pick for jam of the summer, because Lorde just dropped a warm-weather tune that pretty much sums up what it feels like to be young, wild and free. As promised, the singer offered up yet another track from her anticipated Melodrama album on Thursday (June 1), with the party-like-everyone-is-looking anthem "Perfect Places."
Opening with a booming, ricocheting beat and not much else, Lorde sings, "Every night I live and die/ Feel the party to my bones/ Watch the wasters blow the speakers/ Spill my guts beneath the outdoor light." As the New Zealand native rages on through another "graceless night," she ponders the beauty of being "19 and on fire" and just dancing until nothing else matters.
"All of the things we're taking/ 'Cause we are young and ashamed," she sings on the chorus as a wall of 1980s keyboards swells behind her, "Sends us to perfect places/ All of our heroes fading/ Now I can't stand to be alone/ Let's go to perfect places." A kind of bookend to Lorde's breakthrough hit "Royals," the new track finds a more mature Lorde pondering the endless search for these mythical "perfect places", while realizing that they are just that: a myth that is unobtainable.
Lorde described recording the song in a Facebook post, chronicling that search for some meaning in late nights and endless pours. "today, PERFECT PLACES is out in the world. this is a special one," she said. "i was living in new york during summer last year, writing melodrama - i'd ride across the brooklyn bridge every day, or sit on the subway uptown in the heat, then go back home to new zealand winter for a week at a time to party with my friends. my life was like a weird little etch-a-sketch i kept scribbling on and resetting. and all last summer, i couldn't shake the feeling that everyone i knew or saw was searching for something - trying to transcend the news and the screaming pavements, drinking that one drink hoping it'd get them someplace higher. this song comes from that endless cycle of evenings and the violent heat of the summer. it took us a very long time to get right, from an aching piano demo to where is it now. it's close to my heart. i hope you like it."
Pre-order Melodrama, which is due out on June 16 here.