It may only be a 15-second teaser but there’s plenty to suggest album four will be Lorde’s greatest.

Art is subjective and can be multiple things at once but sometimes you just know. You just know when someone is cooking. Not since 2021 – a genuine lifetime ago when you think about it – have we heard new music from Lorde. And this morning she did what she loves to do before dropping an album: clear the website, clear the socials, post a random new profile picture (this time, a dented water bottle) and a 15-second teaser for a new song.

In the clip she’s walking fast through Washington Square Park in New York. In fact, she’s walking like… well, she’s walking like she’s 10 years old, if you catch my drift.

You just know this album is going to be the best thing she’s ever done. Here’s why.

The one lyric we’ve got

“Since I was 17, I gave you everything. Now we wake from a dream, well baby, what was that?”

Is this referring to an ex-boyfriend? A label? Fans? Something else entirely? Whatever it is, it’s grabbed me. The second “WHAT. WAS. THAT??” will 100% become the line that residents hear being screamed from miles away during her world tour.

She’s aged into the industry

Female pop stars lean young but Lorde has always been a decade younger than you think. The fact that she released Solar Power – a languid album that vibes like someone in their mid-30s realising they can just chill – before she was 25 means she’s doing everything well ahead of schedule.

Now, she’s 28 years old, allegedly single since 2023 after her separation from Justin Warren (44?) and working with producer Jim-E Stack (33) on this new album. Could this finally be the album where Lorde is exactly how old she’s meant to be?

If her remix with Charli xcx and the teaser is anything to go by, fans are about to hear some answers to questions they didn’t even know they were asking.

Millennial –> Gen Z

Lorde has always been millennial on paper (born in 1996, the cut-off year) and thanks to aforementioned “old soul/boyfriend” status, has certainly made herself at home within that generation, but in the past 18 months, her true status as the elder Gen Z leader has revealed itself.

The proof is in the Instagram stories: we’ve had janky images of random signs and symbols, thong shots, those buzzy angle selfies that only young people have the flexibility to pull off, and of course, the visible Calvin Klein undie line.

Solar Power, with its jumping-on-the-sand shots and friends eating a sit-down lunch, was a dream for millennials. But this new teaser, with Lorde strutting through the park wearing what can only be described as a lesbian’s wet dream (a thousand keys and charms hanging from the belt hooks of some baggy jeans) places her squarely in the younger generation. Not to mention she dropped the teaser exclusively on TikTok.

Think about those charms and jeans and what sound would accompany them on stage… I can’t wait.

She’s single*

*Unconfirmed. Look, this is not to say that relationship status dictates an artist’s work but if we look at every singer-songwriter in history, it clearly kind of does.

In my humble and ignorant opinion, Lorde’s best album by far is Melodrama, a breakup album composed when she was 18/19 at the end of a three-year relationship with an older man. In 2023, Lorde split from her even older boyfriend after at least half a decade together. That relationship was throughout her early 20s (formative years) and Lorde has written to fans about “living with heartbreak again” and the emotional turmoil following a breakup.

If a breakup, combined with the self-awareness shown in the ‘girl, so confusing’ remix, isn’t a recipe for a hit album, I don’t know what is. Fun fact: I cried while listening to that remix for the first time and that’s never happened before so maybe my investment in this new album is somewhat skewed by it.

She’s being weird again

Lorde is weird (complimentary). There’s no such thing as a child genius and teen superstar who’s not weird. But throughout the past 14 years, there have been long stretches where Lorde has appeared almost normie (remember when she randomly went to Antarctica?). There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but where she shines is in her idiosyncrasies.

She’s earnest always, with a personally written newsletter for fans, and oscillates between oversharing close friend and celebrity enigma. With all her socials and websites wiped, she’s clearing the slate for whatever album four’s persona is. But even from the short clip and the many fish charms and wallet chain (plenty of fish in the sea, perhaps?) I know it’s going to be weird and good as hell.