lorde
Credit: Isaac Brekken/Getty Images for iHeartMedia. LAS VEGAS, NV – SEPTEMBER 20: Recording artist Lorde attends the 2014 iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on September 20, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Almost four long years and one global pandemic after her last album was released, Lorde has announced that finally fans can expect music this month with the release of the first single from her upcoming third album. 

Instead of going the usual social media route, overnight, the New Zealand-born singer quietly updated her website with the artwork for her upcoming single, ‘Solar Power’. In the image, Lorde is on a beach—likely in her hometown of Auckland—jumping in front of the camera in a yellow top and her bikini bottoms. Matching the colour of her clothes reads ‘Solar Power’ above in yellow font. 

Underneath the image Lorde left the message, ‘ARRIVING IN 2021 … PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE,’ a nod to the fact that fans have been bugging the singer for new music for years, following the release of her second album, Melodrama, which came out in 2017. Her debut release Pure Heroin, which catapulted her to international fame, was released almost eight years ago now in 2013. 

Back in May 2020, Lorde told fans in an email that she’d begun recording new music and working with her go-to producer Jack Antonoff in December 2019, shortly after the death of her dog, Pearl. At the time, she wrote, “I started going back to the studio again in December, just for something to do, and to my surprise, good things came out… Happy, playful things. I felt my melodic muscles flexing and strengthening.”

She also addressed fans’ hunger for her music, writing, “As I get older I realise there’s something to be said for the pleasant feeling of waiting for something of quality to become available to you.” 

Malay, a producer who prominently worked on Frank Ocean’s highly lauded albums Channel Orange and Blonde and who previously worked with Lorde’s on songs such as ‘Sober,’ ‘The Louvre,’ and ‘Supercut,’ also casually dropped in an interview in July 2020 that he’d been working on a new Lorde album. Comparing Lorde to Ocean, Malay told Reverb magazine, “She has an insane vision, and she is not going to compromise whatsoever.”

Further proof that an album can be expected very soon is the fact that Lorde will be hitting the road for live shows again soon. Last month, she was confirmed for the Barcelona festival Primavera Sound in 2022. Eagle-eyed fans were quick to spot that Primavera’s website seemingly jumped the gun on Lorde’s album plans, writing that for her first live performance in almost three years she would “emerge from her retirement with her third album after her unforgettable visit in 2018”.

A few details have already been revealed regarding her third record, including that its title will tie in to her forthcoming memoir, Going South, which documents her 2019 trip to Antarctica, which she embarked on to find out about the effects of climate change.

Naturally, fans have zero chill:

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