After nearly four agonizing years without new releases from Lorde, she returned this past Wednesday, April 23, with her much anticipated single “What Was That.” She’d been teasing new music for a long time now and it all came to a cathartic conclusion with her new hit, making waves as it reached No. 1 on the U.S. Spotify charts this weekend! Avid followers of Lorde, such as myself, know that she hasn’t been very active since her Solar Power Tour concluded in April 2023.
She would only occasionally post a cryptic photo dump on her Instagram, often containing hints to the aesthetics of what was to come — and of course, when she redefined girlhood in her iconic feature in Charli xcx’s “girl so confusing ft. lorde,” which gave us — or maybe just me — the most quotable song in history with lines such as: “Let’s work it out on the remix,” “Girl, you walk like a bitch” and “Forgot that inside the icon there’s still a young girl from Essex.” The rollout for “What Was That” was unexpected and exciting; she began by posting a 15 second clip of the chorus to her TikTok on April 9, two weeks before the song officially dropped. This singular clip made headlines, as Lorde was not only back to making music, but also back to making music that was reminiscent of her critically acclaimed album Melodrama. The snippet of the chorus (which went triple platinum on my headphones in the weeks leading up to the full song dropping) contained the lyrics “Since I was 17, I gave you everything / Now we wake from a dream, well baby, What Was That?” As soon as I heard Lorde talk about being seventeen again, I knew this song was going to be synonymous with some of my favorite songs of hers off Melodrama, where she reflects on young love to a killer synth.
She officially announced the song’s release on April 16, a week before the single dropped, in a post sharing the cover art, cryptically captioning it “My new song What Was That. Out soon.” The anticipation for “What Was That” culminated in an insanely huge and chaotic crowd gathering at Washington Square Park, where Lorde had posted requesting to meet at 7 p.m., implying a “impromptu concert” of sorts for the song. She drew in such massive crowds that the “release party” had to be cancelled after the NYPD demanded that the crowds disperse.
Unsurprisingly, the masses remained and got to enjoy Lorde making an appearance two hours later, where she debuted her single, to be released the next night. The mere fact that her simple Instagram story post drew to the park just proved that the world craved Lorde’s return and every single one of her fans was on the edge of their seats to hear what she was dropping next. One impromptu park release party later, “What Was That” finally dropped alongside a low-budget music video following Lorde around NYC in her headphones as she struts through the streets (arguably the best way to listen to this song.)
Amid my Wednesday readings, the clock struck midnight and I dropped everything to tune in. I proceeded to loop the song for hours, watching the music video, interpreting the lyrics and dancing to the synthy chorus over and over again. I will always love a good synth; this is especially the case in Lorde’s unbeatable Melodrama album, where songs such as “Supercut” and “Sober” find their perfect tone in a glorious and emotional synth.
I think I liked “What Was That” so much right off the bat because it shares many similarities with my all-time favorite Lorde track “Hard Feelings,” which contains a similar narrative theme of “post-breakup coping” and a hard synthy instrumental bit that miraculously achieves the same emotional response and weight of Lorde’s genius hard-hitting lyricism. “What Was That” opens with a somber tone and a dissonant piano, locating you in a sphere of the heavy surroundings that define her emotional turmoil post-breakup: “I wear smoke like a wedding veil / Make a meal I won't eat / Step out into the street, alone in a sea, it comes over me.” It hits her — she’s sad because she misses the relationship. She reflects on that distinct sensation of falling fast in love and, ultimately, falling apart just as fast.
The chorus uses words like “dream/haze” and a “waking” from those illusions that are now driving her to question what the relationship was and what they were even doing. If you aren’t already convinced by Lorde’s imagery, she follows the chorus with the second verse, describing a night out with her friends where she’s distracted and blankly “staring,” her mind is so wound up in making sense of her relationship that she diverts from the party and “faces reality” (a classic “party 4 u” moment, if you will). What follows are the most heartbreaking and raw lyrical moments in the track: “You had to know this was happening, you weren't feeling my heat / When I'm in the blue light, down at Baby's All Right, I face reality / I try to let whatever has to pass through me pass through / But this is staying a while, I know it might not let me go.” After the final chorus, Lorde ends with lyricism reminiscent of her 2017 hit “Green Light,” flowing in and out of trying to move on, while also grappling with the hurt and confusion of an abrupt breakup: “When I'm in the blue light, I can make it alright / Baby, what was that?” In “What Was That” Lorde faces the emotional whiplash of what once was, continuing a thematic thread that ties her new sound with the beloved Melodrama-esque narrative.
She came to save the recently deceased post-soul crushing situationship crowd and we should thank her for it because truly… What was that? Paulina Delgado is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at pmd99@cornell.edu Read More
