PodcastsJune 19, 2017

Spinoff exclusive: Lorde explains the backstory behind every song on Melodrama

Guest writer

Lorde: Behind the Melodrama, an 11 episode track-by-track podcast interview with Lorde about her new album is out now. Spinoff Music editor Henry Oliver introduces the series.

Read our definitive review of Melodrama here and our interview with Lorde about her return to the stage at Coachella here.

Over two afternoons in May, I sat in the boardroom of Universal Music New Zealand, in Newton, Auckland, with Lorde to talk about Melodrama.

Ella Yelich-O’Connor signed a development deal with Universal when she was just 12 years old, so grew up visiting the boardroom; she seemed to feel at home there.

In the first session, we spent over an hour talking about ‘Green Light’ and ‘Liability’, which I had been listening to for weeks. A week later, for the second session, Lorde hooked her phone up to the boardroom’s speakers and played me the latest mixes she’d been sent to sign off on. It’s a weird feeling listening to an artist’s new music while they sit close-by, weirder still to be able to ask about whatever struck you on first impression.

I asked her about the lyrics, songwriting and production of her new album, and she told me the stories, processes and influences behind the songs. Over the next 11 episodes, Lorde will guide you through every track on the album, taking you behind the Melodrama.

Listen to Lorde: Behind the Melodrama on Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.

Green Light

“I always want to run toward the thing that feels challenging and scary and exciting, and that didn’t feel like a drum beat and a vocal anymore. Because those types of songs had been number one on the charts for two years. It really felt like there’d been an excess of that type of music, which I am happy for as someone who’s in the camp of minimalism, but also I was like – there has to be a different way to express how I’m feeling.”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7xa863ufUukQLkJHsP4IUy

Sober

“I feel like the essence of Melodrama is ‘We pretend that we just don’t care / but we care’. We fucking care! and I’m going to show you. This record is a document about that care.”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2rO6PC5JGVOPmlFDHJ5mu6

Homemade Dynamite

“Sometimes it is just about having your arms around your friend’s shoulders and being drunk and being into the same song.”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3s22Nq0yD8Tv5xtMc6ZxiU

The Louvre

“I wanted to [give the feeling of] just like the big sun-soaked dumbness of falling in love and it’s like your whole head is like glue, it’s amazing. It is like drugs. It’s like ‘I just want to be by you all the time, I just want to listen to you talk and look at your face do all those dumb things that it does when you talk. It’s just like this big dumb joy and it’s intense – and I feel like the instrumentation in that song kind of helped it get there.”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7eVFRVKLRzuTk3zmMvwv4F

Liability

“I’m so aware of the thoughts that are so potent in a moment and then, in the light of day, you’re like, ‘Alright, I was being a bit of a drama queen there, but it’s all good, I’m over it.’ But I went and immortalised it and now everyone who talks to be about that song gives me this look like I’m dying of a terminal disease … but I think that is the nature of writing a record called Melodrama.”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2EeWD27KmFgBbORxHDEgy4

Hard Feelings/Loveless

“I was basically speed-dating different producers and songwriters in LA and hating it. And then I walked into a room with [Jack Antonoff] and just felt like home. I was like, ‘Oh, yes. I want to be around you as long as I can and as much as possible.’ We were just obsessed with each other.”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3GGNYYqpYqtDxy9LgvPnIa

Sober II (Melodrama)

“I felt more aware of my age than I ever have making a record. I was in these moments of just being gripped by an emotion and I was like ‘I’m feeling this because I’m 20 and everything’s fucked-up inside my brain. I’m actually like rewiring to become an adult. All this is insane!'”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/63Ro8kUcKWcdxMSozoiEPw

Writer In The Dark

“It’s not a historical document. It’s not a police record. It’s not journalism. I didn’t go to journalism school. I’m a writer. It’s about what I felt and sometimes you can feel an element of guilt or ‘Oh God, I shouldn’t have immortalised that person’, but the song is my way of saying ‘It’s what I’ve always been. It’s what I was when you met me. It’s what I will continue to be after you leave. That’s exactly what was going to happen when you kissed a writer in the dark.'”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3z2vCfw7IEduFLQZa4o0CY

Supercut

“I felt the way I used to feel when I made music as a kid and it felt like I could cry because it’s such a relief to get out how you’re feeling for the first time. I remember being like ‘Oh my God’. It was such gratitude for the process. I was like, ‘My outlet!'”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1bTOXeAcSpjX26uaBYj5iL

Liability (Reprise)

“I went into thinking I knew what I was doing and thinking I knew exactly who I was at that moment and what I was going to do and the process has been very confronting and intense and awesome and emotional and it turned out that I wasn’t who I thought I was after all.”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1rnYTVoawVw0rrm5PP2WtE

Perfect Places

“Hating the headlines and the weather and feeling like… Bowie’s gone, and Prince is gone, and George Michael’s gone, and what’s left? I don’t want to be alone in my house with Twitter and it’s all so fucked. Let’s just try and convince ourselves there’s a perfect place we can go to, even just for an evening.”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ZKfQ0xg8TwVi6bGEOO6SY

Keep going!

PodcastsJune 15, 2017

Business is Boring replay: Karen Walker

The Spinoff

Staff writers

‘Business is Boring’ is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt.

Alas, Simon is sick this week so we’ve decided to republish one of our favourite episodes from 2016: fashion Svengali Karen Walker. Their discussion is worth a listen because Karen lays our her philosophy of no compromise and how that’s helped build her business into a kind of super brand.

As Simon wrote at the time “Karen Walker is not just a significant figure in New Zealand, she is a fixture on the Business of Fashion’s list of the 500 most influential figures in fashion worldwide, the brand’s sunglasses are worn by the world’s most famous stars.”

To learn what it takes to create a leviathan of a business and brand, listen on.

Either download (right click to save), have a listen below, subscribe through iTunes (RSS feed) or read on for a transcribed excerpt.

How do you build those ideas that take something that is undifferentiated and differentiate it just through the shapes and the ideas and the imagery?

It all comes down to not going ‘close enough is good enough’, that’s kind of it. Not compromising, I would say, is the most important thing everyday in what we do. It’s not going ‘you can’t make the lenses flatter or bigger? Okay well that’s fine, we’ll just have that funny little curved, tinted lens that everybody else has and stick a logo on the temple.’ That sort of compromise is not something we ever allow. If you can’t do it right and do it to the vision, then you don’t do it. I think that’s probably the difference.

But also having an overall vision and being very clear on the ideas, very clear on the creative, not compromising on that. Having a clear vision not just for the product, but for where the brand and the product should sit and what it should mean. What it should say to people and how it should make people feel. What does the brand mean? What do you we want people to feel when they experience the brand, in whatever form they experience it. And not compromising on that, I think that’s the key thing.

The design business, no matter what area you’re in – typefaces or whatever – there are ones at the pointy end of the spear who are actually going, without compromise, ‘this is my vision and it’s something new’. And then you have 100 people doing that or 1000 or whatever, there’s some people who work like that and then there’s others who trail behind and regurgitate all the idea. That’s the nature of the design business. Our point as always been that we’re at the pointy end. Whatever you guys do behind us, we don’t care about, but this is our vision.

The way that you managed to bring that in stores, for the sunglasses, the bar that you built to travel around to all of the stores because otherwise they’re just sunglasses on a stand.

In-store experience is a funny one. If you have your own stores and you do it right, it’s brilliant for the brand and if you do it wrong it hurts the brand. Ditto if you’re selling into other people’s stores. If it’s in the right store it enhances your brand, if it’s, say, Barneys. And if you’re in the wrong it hurts your brand.

Then you’ve got the whole digital footprint as well that if you do that right it’s good for your brand, if you do it wrong it hurts your brand. Every decision along the way; where it’s sold, how it’s presented, what the experience is, what the product is. Every single decision has to be made on ‘is this in line with our vision for the brand or not?’ Including who we sell it to and how it’s presented in their stores. And we’re very … almost militant around that.