Lorde Breaks the Internet with “Green Light”

Just 51 minutes ago, the internet went into a spiral of live tweets and gifs professing its love for Lorde, whose single “Green Light” is the singer’s first piece of new material since 2014.

With a five second snippet floating around the web yesterday as part of a promo Lorde released in New Zealand, fans were prepared for new waters previously unchartered by the 20-year-old singer. Hints of upbeat, pop infused synths in just a short preview of the single led fellow pop culture analysts like myself to wonder just what direction Ella would be heading.

Turns out, “Green Light” seems to be the most authentic move on Lorde’s end since the start of her career: a single just announced that will be included on her second full length LP, fittingly titled “Melodrama,” and entirely produced by Jack Antonoff of Bleachers and Fun. Antonoff has also worked with Sia and Taylor swift in the past (and I couldn’t be more stoked to see that he’s producing this predicted beautiful body of work).

In an update to her fans last November, Lorde wrote a lengthy Facebook post discussing the fate of her new album and how her writing style had evolved since the release of “Pure Heroine.

“I maxed out every single emotion I have in the best possible way, the colours still aching behind my eyes like this weird blissful hangover…”

“My heart broke. I moved out of home and into the city and I made new friends and started to realize that no-one is just good or bad, that everyone is both. I started to discover in a profound, scary, blood-aching way who I was when I was alone, what I did when I did things only for myself. I was reckless and graceless and terrifying and tender. I threw sprawling parties and sat in restaurants until the early hours, learning what it’s like to be an adult, even talking like one sometimes, until I caught myself. All I wanted to do was dance. I whispered into ears and let my eyes blaze on high and for the first time I felt this intimate, empire-sized inner power.”

“Green Light” has the feisty, blunt lyrics that won Lorde two Grammys at the mere age of 18, combined with dance tempos that rival the likes of Robyn (I can’t be the only one who hears these similarities).

Sometimes I wake up in a different bedroom / I whisper things the city sings them back to you /

The video, that you can watch below, shows Lorde wandering an empty city and taking over the dance floor with her very Lorde-esque dance moves.

Lorde is set to perform on SNL on Saturday, March 11 and will be performing at Coachella in about five weeks. She’ll be performing on a handful of other festivals this summer and is heavily rumored to be at Chicago’s Lollapalooza festival.