On the first anniversary of the official announcement of her third studio album ‘Solar Power’ – and on the day of the summer solstice – Lorde has shared a new music video for the album opener ‘The Path’ as well as a statement on the mix response to the album.
Lorde announced “The Path” music video to fans via his newsletter. Although the video is the upcoming sixth from the album, Lorde called it “the first chapter in the mystical ‘Solar Power’ story, a prequel to the title video”. The visual sees Lorde on the same track as the video for lead single “Solar Power”. As she strolls through the beach campgrounds, she ditches her baggy gray suit for a casual yellow outfit and is eventually joined by the other beach dwellers in a dance.
Upon its release in August last year, “Solar Power” received mixed reviews from critics. Although Variety Senior music critic Chris Willman wrote in his review that the star “pulled off one of pop music’s toughest stunts: making a happy album that’s a good album”, many other reviewers were more ambivalent, judging the “underpowered” album (The Daily Telegraph) and his “least vital project” (Spin). In her newsletter, Lorde acknowledged the response, calling the experience “sometimes painful to go through”.
“It’s been a year since I announced the release of “Solar Power”. I can honestly say this has been the year with the highest highs and lowest lows I think I have ever had. It took a while for people to get the album – I still get emails every day from people who just saw it now! — and that response was truly confusing and sometimes painful to sit at first,” Lorde wrote. “I’ve learned a lot about myself and how I’m perceived creating and releasing this album, and I feel much more connected and alive in my artistic practice and my life than hardly ever before. It feels dry but it’s true !!!”
Despite the mixed response, Lorde maintained that she was grateful for the album and for the fans who supported it, saying it was “necessary” for her evolution as an artist.
“I was sitting with a friend recently drinking chai in a country house in England, she’s also an artist, and we came across the subject of the album somehow. She said: “It’s clearly one of those works that is done between picks, the kind that is sometimes necessary for makers, no less valuable, in fact, there can be no picks at all without such works ‘I think that’s true of the record,’ Lorde said. meaning there, both for you and for me, in a new and vivid way. And thanks to ‘SP’, I was able to work through some big personal issues that made it pretty hard for me to do things like travel or play shows without being completely overwhelmed.
Lorde is currently on tour promoting “Solar Power”, with the newsletter being penned during a recent stopover in Croatia, where her mother is from. Watch the full clip for “The Path” below.
