It's been nearly four years since Lorde's debut, Pure Heroine came out and officially made her a star. But, in 2017, her "Royals"-ness will be gracing the world with new Lorde music that will put a little hop in your step. As Lorde tweeted after it was announced that she'd be playing this year's Coachella, featuring Beyoncé as one of its headliners, "Um, so... I think it's time we danced." The tweet was a celebration of the fact that the singer will be playing her first full show in nearly three years, but it also seems like a clue to what kind of music Lorde's been working on.
There has been no official announcement about when her new album will officially drop, but, for the last two years, she's been slyly dropping hints as to what she's been up to on social. Check out Lorde's Instagram, and you'll see photos from her recent 20th birthday mixed in with shots of who she's been collaborating with at Electric Lady studio in New York City. Scroll through Lorde's tweets, and you'll notice she's been teasing her album in less than 140-characters. A recent tweet featuring a photo of a simple pair of earbuds even revealed that's how Lorde's been listening to her album, because she wants to "hear it exactly how you will."
She hasn't actually teased any music on social media, but here's what we she's said about her new album that will help us make educated guesses as to what she's got up her sleeves.
1. Lorde's Newest Collaborator Is T. Swift-Approved
Jack Antonoff has made a lot of appearances on Lorde's Instagram this year, both in and out of the studio. As she noted in the caption for the photo featured above: "My hero, working on two records right now and always on the damn phone." She's never been shy about her fandom when it comes to Antonoff and his bands fun. and Bleachers. He's become a go-to producer for a lot of female artists, including Lorde's bestie Taylor Swift. He worker with Swift on her first official pop album 1989, co-writing "Out of the Woods," and her duet with Zayn Malik for Fifty Shades Darker. Working with Antonoff definitely could hint at the direction Lorde's going in for her new music.
2. In 2017, Lorde's A Dancing Queen?
Lorde promised there would be dancing at Coachella, where she will be playing new music. She has said that her new album is "totally different" than her debut, according to NME. How so? Well, she says it sounds a lot like Robyn, an artist who certainly knows how to get people dancing. It wouldn't be too surprising to hear that Lorde is going in a direction, since one of the few songs she put out after Pure Heroine was with Disclosure. The band, featuring brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence, has been making electronic music that the indie kids want to dance to since their 2012 album, Settle, made them breakout stars.
On the 2015 track "Magnets", Lorde sounds a bit more mature and a lot more sultry than she did on her first album, which she recorded when she was 16 years old. Going in the Disclosure direction certainly makes sense, especially since she told fans in a note on Facebook before her 20th birthday that in 2016 "all I wanted to do was dance."
3. The Music Lorde Loved In 2016 Hints At Her Influences
Lorde isn't shy about the music she loves. This year, she raved about Banks' new album, The Altar and New Zealand producer October's single "Cherry Cola" on Twitter. She talked about how much fun she had at Coachella dancing to Disclosure, Major Lazer, Grimes, and Flume, who showed up on her Instagram at least once. (The Aussie remixed her song "Tennis Court," but maybe there's a proper collab happening on her new album?)
What do these all of these artists have in common? Well, they're all really fun to dance to obviously, but they're also artists that are influenced by electronic music. Just another clue that Lorde is going to get you dancing in 2017.
4. Lorde's Grown Up & So Has Her Sound
And this Lorde is not the one we met four years ago. She made this clear in a Facebook post right before her 20th birthday in November. "All my life I’ve been obsessed with adolescence, drunk on it. Even when I was little, I knew that teenagers sparkled," she wrote, but "sometime in the last year or so, part of me crossed over." No longer a teenager, Lorde's been thinking about who she is. "I turned inwards to my friends, my family, towards this moment, so I could learn more about who I was," she said, "and so I could let this new project show itself to me."
That it did. Lorde said in 2016 that she wrote a whole record about her life. "Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory, putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies," she wrote on Facebook. "And this record — well, this one is about what comes next."
While I can only speculate what Lorde's album is actually going to sound like, what's clear is that it will definitely represent the women she is now.
