Lorde's new song Green Light a 'triumphant' return

New Zealand-born pop prodigy Lorde has released her first single since 2014 and it has got music fans and critics talking.

Lorde burst on to the music scene aged 16 in 2013, when her single Royals saw her become the youngest person to score a US number one single for 26 years. But she has released little since then, other than Yellow Flicker Beat, her single for the Hunger Games soundtrack in 2014.

However, she's now firmly back in the limelight with her new song and video Green Light.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"content_original","fid":"109094","attributes":{"class":"media-image"}}]]

Maura Johnston at The Guardian hails Green Light as a "triumphant" return and "a stellar 90s-inspired pop song" about heartbreak.

It begins with "a sparse piano beat", "spectral backing vocals" and poetic lyrics, before shifting and turning "technicolor and dragging Lorde on to the dance floor", says the critic, and the "push-pull" continues "until the ebullience wins out, in a joyous outro" that recalls "sunshine-bright alt-pop hits of the late 90s".

Gabe Bergado at Inverse says it was worth the wait. Green Light is "fresh and familiar" and the video "excellently simple", he declares.

Given that fans haven't seen much of the singer lately, "it's perfect" that the video is centred on Lorde herself, partying in a club and on the streets and even dancing on top of a car while the driver smokes a cigarette.

It's certainly a change of pace for the singer, says Carrie Battan in the New Yorker.

As an "eerily precocious teenager", Lorde seemed to float above the emotional intensity of her adolescent peers, "thoughtful and sensitive and filled with malaise". In her new song, however, "her pulse has quickened, and the jadedness of adolescence has given way to earnestness". Green Light builds to turn into "a gratifying, unselfconscious shout".

Nor is this a one-off - Lorde also announced the title of her upcoming album, Melodrama, on Instagram.

She had already given a hint about what to expect with a comment posted on her Facebook page on her 20th birthday last November, telling fans: "Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory. Putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies, and this record - well, this one is about what comes next."

Melodrama is due out this summer.