Color symbolism in Lorde's music
In honor of the new album, here's a kaleidoscopic supercut of her eras
Following the stones
Lorde released her latest album Virgin on Friday, and as previously mentioned, I’m ecstatic. I’m 10 years older than her, but her music was the soundtrack to my life during key moments:
Pure Heroine for moving to NYC;
Melodrama for my upward climb in media and disillusionment with the news cycle;
and Solar Power for re-emerging from Covid in the city.
I got pulled into Pure Heroine for its class commentary from someone much wiser than her years, and have stayed a fan of her visceral, poetic vibes. There are some lines from Melodrama that feel like spiritual successors to Emily Dickinson, if she knew about fuckboys and synths.1
In reviewing Virgin and her past work, I thought it would be fun to do some music analysis by taking a look at the color imagery in Lorde’s albums and what the symbolism might mean in her songs.
A few notes before we begin
Color inclusion: Lorde has said she experiences synesthesia when making music, and has confirmed specific colors as representing corresponding albums, so those are the ones I’ve included in this essay. I will be diving into what I think each color represents. Not every lyric I call out may include the specific color, but may be part of a larger leitmotif that the color evokes. This is especially true for albums like Pure Heroine and Virgin.
Analysis: I’ll primarily be looking at lyrics and music video imagery for this essay, rather than any specifics about production, technical craft, or speculation about Lorde’s personal life/past relationships.
Organization: For my own sanity and to distinguish between lyrics and titles, I will be bolding song titles and albums, and using quotes around song lyrics.
Credits: Full songwriting credits shared here2
Let’s “dance with the truth,” shall we?
GREEN, the hardest hue to hold in Pure Heroine
Major themes
Lorde’s first album Pure Heroine, which came out in 2013 when she was 16, uses the color green to weave a story of youth in the face of change. Wanting status/wealth, moving away from home, and feeling friends slip away are all themes. She balances the confidence of her youth, with a world-weariness of someone much older who craves connection with her peers, but knows that these moments of quiet stasis are disappearing. Since this is her first album, I don’t think the color imagery comes through as frequently as it does in her later work, but green shows up in a few lines across these themes:
Money/status
The counting of money in Royals, the stacks in Million Dollar Bills and Still Sane, and getting a thrill from buying things in Tennis Courts
Upward momentum
The suburbs’ “tree streets” and wanting to stay the same in 400 Lux, building personal momentum in “the swing of things” in Still Sane, the “restless summer air” in Glory and Gore
Age
Youthful bravado in not thinking about death in Glory and Gore, but worries about getting older in Ribs
Transition to the next album
I haven’t seen any confirmation from Lorde on this, but I think there are shades of Melodrama in this album. Whether Lorde saw the spark of violet while making Pure Heroine is uncertain, but hold onto the imagery here of bruises, darkness, and body parts — they’re a prelude to the next era.
A World Alone: “That slow burn, wait while it gets dark/Bruising the sun” and “you're biting my lip/I'm biting my tongue”
These VIOLET delights have violent ends in Melodrama
Major themes
Lorde released Melodrama four years later at age 20, and it is full-throttle in its sound, imagery, and color. The visual language is more solidified here. If the green in Pure Heroine was about youth chasing money in the “tree streets,” the violet in Melodrama embraces the hedonistic darkness in the corner of a party. The violet also seems to represent a feral unpredictability: the mention of body parts, drug use, and decisions that might lead to violence. I love this album so much — it’s a perfect encapsulation of the wrenching ambiguity and emotional oscillation of being in your early 20s.
The nods to the past era → embracing the darkness
Lorde has some callback lines that evoke Pure Heroine, and the color green’s meaning has shifted in Melodrama as it speeds toward violet’s intimacy. Green no longer is about youthful bravado, but rather about evolving beyond a relationship, and being on the cusp of a new darker energy. There’s mention of wanting a sign to move on in Green Light, and the ecstasy of a “liquor-wet lime” in Sober.
Body parts
Now moving into the violet color story, there’s a lot of mention of internal body parts balanced with drug use and the animal heat of having hands everywhere. But there’s also a sense of wanting more emotional closeness — from someone who’s used to baring her teeth and is scared of saying she wants to be embraced. Teeth, tongues, guts, hearts, and fevers all add to this feral imagery in songs like Green Light, The Louvre, Supercut, Sober, Perfect Places, and Writer in the Dark. These moments are punctuated by drug use (The Louvre: “Well, summer slipped us underneath her tongue”) and intimacies (Supercut: “Wild, fluorescent, come home to my heart”).
Unpredictable decision-making that leads to violence
With this descent into dark places, the emotional and physical heat lead to a crash. Tying to violet’s connection with body parts, there’s wordplay with violet/violence, as well as mentions of blood and broken bits in songs like Liability Supercut, and Homemade Dynamite (“painted on the road, red and chrome/All the broken glass sparkling”). Some of it, like in Writer in the Dark, admits to a love that needs restraints (“I'll love you 'til you call the cops on me”).
Transition to the next album
I think you can see glimmers of the next album’s themes in this line from Liability: “You’re going to watch me disappear into the sun.”
Sun-kissed GOLDEN in Solar Power
Major themes
Lorde released Solar Power in 2021, and the album was written during the height of the pandemic. If Melodrama was about disappearing into darkness, Solar Power steps out into the sun with its sound and imagery. There’s references to maturity, searching for purpose, and ending old habits. The imagery from the music videos is of a sun-kissed granola goddess who might find the answers in a smaller but mystical life.
The nods to past eras → embracing maturity
Lorde gives us a callback to her youth and the green of Pure Heroine in The Path (“Born in the year of Oxycontin/Raised in the tall grass”). After the emotional tumult of the violet Melodrama, Lorde acknowledges the need for stability and protection in her golden era (Leader of the New Regime: “Wearing SPF 3000 for the ultra-violet rays”). When she might have been dancing in the dark of Melodrama, here she knows her limits by “turn[ing] the lights up” and leaving the party scene in songs like Secrets from a Girl and Big Star.
Light/Stars - Finding a higher purpose
With this sense of maturity comes a search for meaning, and Lorde sings about trying to find the signs — in the cosmos, spirituality, and community. This quest really shines through in specific golden imagery, by looking to the sun and stars for answers in The Path, Helen of Troy, Oceanic Feeling and Solar Power. Whether she finds this purpose is a bit ambiguous, and there are satiric references in relying too hard on modern wellness practices in songs like Mood Ring, Oceanic Feeling, and Secrets from a Girl. In Oceanic Feeling, she admits she’s still on her journey (“It's shimmerin' higher/On the beach, I'm buildin' a pyre”), and in Secrets from a Girl, the sunset inspires “euphoria, mixed with existential vertigo.”
Endings
With this search for enlightenment also comes a sense of dueling energy about whether to end old destructive relationships and habits. In California, Lorde shares the warm nostalgia of a relationship (“And I'd pay it all again to have your golden body back in my bed”) that may have turned sour during her Pure Heroine days (“But every time I smell tequila/The garden grows up in my mind again.”) She finds some closure in Big Star with watching a lover leave in “the amber light.” In Stoned at the Nail Salon, she seemingly closes the door on bad habits (“dancing all over the landmines”) by embracing her new era (“But the sun has to rise”).
Transition to the next album
Lorde has since said in the promotion of Virgin that the Solar Power era felt least like her, saying:
“Me disappearing and being all wafty… I was like ‘actually, I don’t think this is me.’ I think I just am this person who’s meant to make these bangers that fuck us all up.”
Perhaps a hint of Virgin’s skin-baring clarity shows up in this line from Solar Power:
Hold No Grudge: “Remember when we used to swim, baby/No one around, take off all our clothes?/And in a clear cold, we were born again”
CLEAR eyes and a full heart in Virgin
Major themes
While many fans speculated this latest Virgin album might be influenced by the color red, Lorde emphasized it’s the color “clear”: “LIKE BATHWATER, WINDOWS, ICE, SPIT. FULL TRANSPARENCY. THE LANGUAGE IS PLAIN AND UNSENTIMENTAL.”
In the imagery of the album promotion and the three videos, you see her strip down to essentials: little to no makeup, duct tape, a water bottle, her naked body. With Lorde at her most introspective, the music itself follows this with experimental, soul-baring lyrics: dissatisfaction at past relationships, embracing the unknown of a shifting gender identity, and the city as a site of self-discovery. There are revelations too: a past struggle with an eating disorder in Broken Glass, the euphoric high of a negative pregnancy test in Clearblue.
The nods to past eras → embracing a messy middle
Lorde references the emotional journey of her past albums. This comes through heavily in the first single What Was That, which suggests a breaking point with the youthful vulnerability in Pure Heroine (“Since I was seventeen, I gave you everything”) and the drug-tinged intimacy in Melodrama (“MDMA in the back garden … we kissed for hours straight”). It also hints that the emotional boundaries and stability found in Solar Power were probably fleeting (“you weren’t feeling my heat”). While going through a personal vibe shift, Lorde wonders if she is over-thinking these past moments (“it might not let me go”). In David, she laments that her youth was used against her (“Pure heroine mistaken for featherweight”).
Dissatisfaction with playing a role
Lorde further illustrates dissatisfaction in past relationships in her lyrics. The sources could be interpreted in different ways: past older lovers, her label/producers, her mother, and potentially even with her fandom. Soap in GRWM and spit in Current Affairs are physical souvenirs of sex in an ambiguous relationship. What if she could just let go, as she muses in Shapeshifter? There’s a need to put herself first.
Shifting identity
This album embraces identity transformation, whether that’s with her public image or her gender representation, or getting past her eating disorder. Tears, mirrors, windows, mouthwash, and haze all add to the transparent imagery in Hammer, Broken Glass, Man of the Year, and Clearblue. She also confronts her transformation in GRWM but acknowledges she may not be in her final form yet (“I can’t find a grown woman”). But rather than a regression, it’s acknowledging the messiness of raw authenticity. This attunement to her vulnerability is part of her strength, as she illustrates in If She Could See Me Now (“'Cause I'm a mystic, I swim in waters/ That would drown so many other bitches”).
NYC as a character
While Lorde famously worked on Melodrama in a Manhattan diner, she makes explicit references to the city in Virgin. Whether it’s getting her aura read at Magic Jewelry in Chinatown in Man of the Year, the pigeons in the Hammer video, or hanging out at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn and the Washington Square Park concert in What Was That, for Lorde the city is a site of self-discovery.
Transition to the next album?
It’s hard to say where Lorde might go next, since she literally just released this and might still be vibing this era. But it’s possible she’s dropped some future breadcrumbs, color-wise, based on a couple lines:
Blue: Water plays a big role in Virgin. There’s reference to feeling blue in What was That, fountains in Hammer and David, and the euphoria of the unknown in Clearblue. She could possibly take a blue path for further emotional clarity and release, though I would argue she has already tread the color enough in both Solar Power and Virgin. So, I think it might be the next one …
Clay: If She Could See Me Now feels like a letter to her past self going through the tumult of Melodrama. There’s one evocative line that makes me feel like she could go down an earthier route: “As for me, I’m going back to the clay.” The last song, David, might also be a reference to Michelangelo’s famous statue, and speaks to evolving desires.
What do you think of Lorde’s music? Any other music you think is worthy of color analysis?
Extended Reading
Olivia Horn’s Virgin review - “gritty, tender, and often transcendent ode to freedom and transformation” | Pitchfork
On Virgin, Lorde has never been less certain or more alive | AV Club
How to wear an x-ray (about Virgin and translucent clothes) | Yeehawt
Loose Buttons posts you may enjoy
Rattling cages for Lorde’s next album
The symbolism of the green carpet in Severance
The foreshadowing of Ingrid Bergman’s clothes in Casablanca
Y2k sci-fi style
My favorite illustrations of this:
Sober (“Oh god, I’m closing my teeth around this liquor-wet lime”) reminds me of Dickinson’s “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed” (“I taste a liquor never brewed – From Tankards scooped in Pearl – Not all the Frankfort Berries/Yield such an Alcohol!”).
Supercut (“Because ours are the moments I play in the dark/We were wild and fluorescent/Come home to my heart, uh”) feels spiritually similar to Dickinson’s “Wild nights - wild nights!” (“Wild nights - Wild nights!/Were I with thee/Wild nights should be/Our luxury!”)
Pure Heroine: lyrics written by Ella Yelich-O'Connor and Joel Little. Melodrama: lyrics written by Ella Yelich-O’Connor, Jack Antonoff, Tove Lo (Homemade Dynamite). Solar Power: lyrics written by Ella Yelich-O’Connor, Jack Antonoff, Robin Carlsson (Secrets from a Girl(Who’s Seen it All)). Virgin: lyrics written by Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, James Harmon Stack. Additional credits: Shapeshifter: Andrew Aged, Rob Moose; Current Affairs: Fabiana Palladino, Louis Anthony Grandison, Craig Harrisingh and David Harrisingh; Broken Glass: Nigro; If She Could See Me Now: Fabiana Palladino, William DiSerafino, Ronald Ray Bryant, Francisco Javier Bautista Jr, Nathan Perez.
https://thelastchord.substack.com/p/review-lordes-virgin