Switched on Pop - Summer Hits: Lorde - Solar Power (w Hanif Abdurraqib)

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Lorde's new song "Solar Power" set the internet ablaze when it dropped from out of nowhere in June. Some fans found the song to be a buoyant departure from Lorde's last release, Melodrama, while others thought the track felt half-baked. On top of that, listeners questioned the song's provenance — had Lorde cribbed too closely from 90s hitmakers like Primal Scream and George Michael? To listen closely to "Solar Power" and unpack its polarizing sounds, we needed to speak to someone with an unerring ear and a razor-sharp mind: the author, poet, and host of Object of Sound, Hanif Abdurraqib. Hanif knows Lorde's catalog like the back of his hand, and he's got feelings about this latest release. But he also offers a word of caution: wait for the album before reserving judgment! Hanif doesn't just take us deep into "Solar Power," though, he helps us get philosophical on some trenchant musical questions, including: What is a summer song, anyway? Where's the line between stealing and inspiration? And most importantly, does Lorde's track end six minutes too early?? Songs Discussed: Lorde - Solar Power, Royals, Liability, Green Light, The Louvre Nick Drake - Bryter Layter Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil Roxy Music - In Every Dream Home a Heartache Primal Scream - Loaded George Michael - Freedom! '90, Faith Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley More Check out Hanif Abdurraqib's podcast Object of Sound Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switch John Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Low in Ano Domini, 2021, Our Lord has given unto us a new song, and it is called Solar Power. And as part of our summer hit series, we need to break the song down.

And in order to do so, let's bring in one of our favorite writers and podcasters, the host of Object of Sound. It's Hanif Abdurakib. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It's good to see you. I'll get to talk to y'all. We are thrilled. Only a crossover episode, I think, could tackle this kind of surprise release from Lord.

Solar Power is the first single from her album, which is forthcoming in August. Let's listen to this song and try and. and unpack what are some of the musical and lyrical features at work here? What is this song trying to accomplish? Hanif, what was your first reaction when you heard this track? I didn't understand why it was so polarizing, I think. Yeah, it seems like there's a line in the sand between people who listen to solar power and hear this as an extension of Lord's artistry and others who hear it as a step backwards.

And that's just a thing that I think happens in, you know, people enjoy picking teams and picking sides, but I thought it was just fine. And I think a few things are more puzzling to me in music than when songs or albums or artists that are just fine, it was a really, like, intensely polarizing response. Because I think most songs are fine. I think there are interesting elements to it.

But I also think it's fascinating to me that, Lord has continued to kind of find ways to maneuver around the fact that, you know, she's not really a singer. She's definitely not like a singer's singer, but she is a very, very skilled deliverer of language. You know, I think the way she is perhaps re-aligning the way I consider the singer who is effectively just speaking. Because she's such a melodic speaker and a melodic deliverer of language that,

that even though the vocal flourishes aren't always there, when they are there, they feel kind of, at least to me, like, hyperproduced. I think she actually does her best work in the kind of quiet, gravelly sentence form. Someone takes a hold. Can I kick it? Yeah, I can. She is a potent deliverer of language. That really captures something for me. Charles, what do you think this song is trying to accomplish? Well, I think it's operating on a couple of different planes. One is obviously, how do you follow up being Lord?

Right? Someone whose records pure heroin and melodrama effectively helped inform the sound of popular music over the last almost 10 years. So there's the first challenge of like, is the song trying to accomplish as a reset of what's the Lord's next project going to be? And then there's like what the song itself is trying to say, which I think is what we're generally a little bit more interested in. But I hear both happening simultaneously, which is basically, if Lord is particularly good

at, like, how Hanif put it, the sort of gravelly sounds and sort of more spoken moments, or her voice being a sort of contrast to the very predominant synthesized sounds, a sort of low-key trap beat with high production synthesizers. That is what I expect when I hear Lord, with a few variations where she goes into some acoustic realm for some of her most intimate, often darker songs, things like liability. This is a reset to that because we're getting an upbeat acoustic song, feels like just a summer jam, and I think that it succeeds in helping set expectations of where she's trying to go, because, as Hanif said, why be so polarizing?

Don't mean to use polarizing as a pun with solar power. But for real, like, it's just a fun song. And on first impression, it's not about making a deep, profound statement. And yet, thinking about like, what is the song trying to accomplish, I think it's trying to sneak in being a song of summer while simultaneously being a pagan sun worship goddess song. And I love it. Yeah, but I also, but I think that like, I don't know, I've heard some, so the dialogue that I've seen is how it's like trying to sneakily be a song of summer. And I think there's actually a strong deliberate nature to this. lyrically at least. There's a real deliberate.

Definitely. I feel like the opening verse itself is it's kind of like a call to get outside in a way that, yes, we can play around with the extension of metaphor throughout the song. But really, I don't know if a lot of people playing this out of their car on the radio from the radio or in the target over the loudspeakers or at the bar are going to be extending these metaphors about loving the sun, it's just going to be like, this shit is about how good it feels to be warm. For me, you know, I like, I mean, we could maybe talk about this later, but when it comes to the construct of a song of the summer, I maybe lean more towards songs that sonically feel warm where the language is not doing the work, but the sound is. And I think this song had a real

opportunity to do that, but it does, for me, open a little heavy-handed on the lyrical front. I think it has a coolness to it as well in the music of the beginning, because it starts with an acoustic guitar, which I think is normally something we would think of as a warm instrument, like a play it around the campfire instrument, a bring it out to the beach, to the park, and jam instrument. But the way this acoustic guitar sounds at the beginning is a little kind of dry and brittle. it's not giving you that warmth that you might expect. I hate the winter. Can't stand the cold. I tend to cancel. It's being played very quietly.

It's miced very closely, so closely that you can hear the players, whether it's Lord or the producer behind this track, Jack Antonoff, whoever it's playing, you can actually hear their hands like moving up and down the strings of the guitar, creating this kind of friction that's like this wicker-wik-a-wik-it sound. I hate the winter. Can't stand the cold. Yeah, which is actually one of my favorite things in music, although I like when that sound arrives on headphones more than I do on kind of the plain outward speakers. Because it feels intimate in a way that is almost accidental.

Like you can hear if you listen to like Nick Drake's records on headphones. You can hear it, like, especially on Brighter Later, you can hear, you know, his hands kind of moving along. And that makes you feel in the room. I think there's something about this that does not make me feel in the room. And I know that I'm maybe being a bit skeptical about the song, which I don't really feel that much skepticism about overall. But I think whenever we get a song that uses this format of a quiet and gradual buildup towards something more fluorescent, it does require the trick of. of making people believe in what is happening in the silence or in the quiet, which I don't know if I'm there at the beginning of this song.

I feel like if I can be generous to the production, I'd say that maybe the opening for me feels like we're inside being greeted to go outside throughout as the song unfolds. Nate, as you were saying, I actually really don't like how these guitars are produced. They are so close-miked that it's overly bassy. Yeah. There's not enough of the shine and trance. that you want in the acoustic guitars actually come in later in the song. In a certain way, it kind of feels like the sort of meta-conversation of us all finally being

able to step outside in this moment of the ongoing but changing pandemic. And so there's maybe a way in which the production mirrors that intentional or not. I don't know. But I do enjoy the experience of finally arriving at the final chorus. I don't know. The song doesn't really have a typical chorus. the chorus doesn't have repeated lyrics, so it's really only the outro of the worshipping of the sun

that is the sort of big moment, the title moment. Let's listen to that, that moment of fluorescence, as Hanif described at the moment, that could be confused for a chorus. Is it an outro? Is it a chorus? Charlie doesn't know. Let's listen.

Let's see if it's giving us that payoff that we're desiring. Charlie, you're nodding your head. if you're kind of impassive, I feel like that polarization that we saw in the reaction of the song is transpiring before my very eyes right here. Well, I do like the song's close. I especially like, you know, whenever this happens in songs, wherever there's like a large shift in a song and it becomes a different song and its very final act, I think it is best performed when it seems like the singer knows that they're holding on to a secret.

And I love the moment before that moment where it seems like Lord is almost smiling her way towards the, towards the song shifting, the Volta at the end. That really impresses me and excites me as much as the ending, which I wanted a bit more of. I wish it lingered a bit longer. You know, it arrives and then we're evicted from it, I think. For me, at least, I felt evicted from it before I got to feel it sink in. So when I talk about payoff, what I mostly mean is, for some, Some they might think that this is, we've eaten the meal, this is our like dessert or what have you. But because of that, to use that framework, I find myself not wanting to have the plate taken away.

You know what I mean? I would like to have an option for perhaps letting it linger for a while and savoring it for a bit. And so it does feel like there's the sweetness is evicted from the song's architecture before I could really sink into it. Maybe to borrow your metaphor, Hanif, about being around the table, we do have in the music video of this song a sort of pagan worship Last Supper with Lord as center goddess figure in all yellow, her followers in sort of tattered rag clothing. And she, of course, makes her own allusion to Jesus here in the song. Come on, come on, tell you my secrets. I'm kind of like a prettier Jesus. Which is, I think, where we can maybe go into the, this song is definitely a song of summer song.

Most of us listening to it in the background at CVS are for sure just capturing solar power. How fun. But, you know, she's trying to do a little bit more here. And the musical connection that I've seen a number make is to the song, Sympathy for the Devil, which does have that amazing long payoff. To your point, you get the, I think in sympathy for the devil, the outro with a hand percussion and a very similar kind of groove is probably half the song. And you want it to keep going and going and going. And I do wonder if Lord and Jack Antonoff had to make the decision of, well, we do want this to play on commercial top 40 radio in 2021.

And so let's just chop it off. Which, I mean, to me, I think that's maybe what bugs me a little bit about it is that it seems like a commercial. decision and not really a song-based decision or a structural decision. And I don't even think I have to be that much. You know, like when I think about a song like Every Dream Home a Heartache, my Roxy Music, which also does this thing where it becomes a different song at the end. And it's not half the song, but it's enough. It's loud and frantic.

And I feel like you are almost wanting it to end because it feels like you've ascended very slowly to the top of a very tall roller coaster and you're on the way down. and you've maybe, at least with every dream home heartache for me, I feel like by the time it ends, I'm wanting it to end. Comparing this song to Roxy Music, to the Rolling Stones, maybe brings us into another element of the reaction to solar power, which is the idea that this song might sound like a lot of other songs. and some of the biggest resemblances that people have noticed are two songs from 1990.

One is loaded by primal scream. And the other is Freedom 90 by George Michael. Solar power, Freedom 90, loaded, even sympathy for the devil. They all have a similar groove. They even have the exact same chord progression. So I'm curious what, what? you two make of this. Is this something that Lord and Jack Anonoff should be criticized for, celebrated for? Neither. I'm curious what your reaction to these sonic resemblances is. I mean, I don't think

they should be criticized or celebrated. I don't know what the point of celebration would be, but I also don't know what the point of criticism would be. I mean, if the point of criticism is, this song sounds like a lot of other songs, and, I mean, get in mind. At this point, I just, it's 2021. I'm not sure how invested I am in criticizing anyone for the recycling of sounds. And I do mean recycling. I don't mean sampling, right? I mean like just taking chord progressions and then maybe making one small tweak to them.

Because that's something I also hear everywhere. I mean, at the very least happy that it took people back to my favorite primal screen album. I think I tend to agree, Hanif. you know, to me, what this reveals is not that Lord and Jack Antonoff consciously or subconsciously copied another track. To me, what this shows is that there are these certain musical elements, certain rhythms, certain harmonic progressions that will be with us probably as long as people are making music and that we could probably trace much deeper in history past 1990 and George Michael and, and, uh, primal screen, past even the 60s and 70s and the Rolling Stones, like we could trace this back to Bo Diddley, who has that same rhythm. Bump, bump, bop, bop, bop.

And of course, then we could trace that back even further to the clave rhythm from the Caribbean. To the trisio rhythm of New Orleans. To the ham bone tradition imported from. from West Africa. To me, these are core parts of American popular music. And what they reveal is that, I think, as usual, so many of the hallmarks of American pop are imported from different places and have now become part of the landscape that we're so familiar with.

A big part of the discourse seems to be about the issues of originality. And I think depending on our musical, literacy, it can seem that things that use common elements evoke another song, which are obviously just building blocks. This is, of course, also an age-old discourse. And so core progressions, rhythms, and so on. When I first heard this song, I actually heard George Michael's faith because it uses that same Bo Diddley beat, whereas George Michael's Freedom 90, which people are hearing actually uses the chord progression. So you're hearing just different elements that are coming together. And for me, you know, each song is in a relationship with all other songs. Conscious or unconscious,

it's part of what helps build our relationship to that song and provoke certain kind of emotional responses. And so if it's bringing up primal scream for some and George Michael for others, I think both are joyous kind of summary vibes. And I think that she translates that fairly effectively and it works here. Let's take a quick break more with Hanif when we come back. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough.

Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no. No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives,

actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Okay, Hanif, here's a tough question. Is Solar Power a song of summer? The song of the summer discourse is funny to me because, so I did not enjoy Lord's first album. I didn't think pure heroin was just not for me, but I loved Mel. I mean, I think Melodrama for me is one of my favorite pop albums of the past 10 years. To me, Melodrama is a summer album.

There's a big album of the summer, even though it didn't have the vibes lyrically or perhaps sonically for some. But I live in a place where it storms briefly and violently. and you have to sometimes sit in your car. You'll be sunny when you leave the house. And then when you get to your destination, it's storming. You have to sit in your car and wait for the storm to die down

enough for you to go outside. And melodrama is kind of a perfect album for that, for kind of acting as a companion sound to the rain beating against your vehicle. And so melodrama reminds me distinctly of the summer 2017. And it is interesting to me to see the song of the summer discourse.

still happening in a way because we're entering at the very least our second summer of anxiety with being in the world. Now that I know there are some, you know, more freedoms with how we move in the world now, but there's still, I think, at least in my corner of this world, widespread anxiety about the outside. And so it's so interesting to me to have Song of the Summer discourse, because I don't know if songs live outside in the same way that they used to or had potential to. One, let me say, I don't know if there needs to be a song of the summer. And I don't know if that's a useful designation anymore. Yeah.

In part because music is so, you know, music listeners are looking for different things to propel them through months that are sometimes terribly hot and not a lot of fun and then have bursts of joy in between. or for some months that are overwhelmed with joy and sometimes overwhelmed with sweat and discomfort. I think we all experience summer differently based off of region, emotional ecosystem, all these things that I've always been a bit skeptical about designating a single song of the summer, but I think it becomes less and less useful

as the years go on. I like to think maybe about songs of summer, things that are the ones that we can pick up on that might be speaking to regional difference, cultural differences, in a positive sort of way, and sort of shining the diversity of experiences might be happening in a North American summer. And the one part about that designation that does still hold water for me, I don't really like canonization in general. But what I do enjoy is the idea that sort of a counter to pop music, which is so singularly,

seems today about individual listening. And thinking of songs that can represent our summer, maybe it reinvites the idea of the collective a bit. And in that way, this song is bringing me into a collective, whether silly or quasi-serious worship of the sun, where I might be able to either step outside or maybe look outside my window and see other people thinking about the same thing, it makes me happier the summer. But it also, so a function of the way the song is structured where we have the silence before the music drops again and when the music drops again, it is different than the music that existed

before, that's actually something that summons that kind of communal experience, right? Because that is a definitive part that everyone can know and everyone can react to when it arrives. Now react differently, sure. But just if we're talking about how the sounds move the body, anytime I think you have a moment that's like the song is now becoming different. And not only is becoming different, it is becoming different in a way that is more exuberant than it was before. That is actually like a sonic trick that I think summons the communal response

that maybe gets at some of what you're thinking about, Charlie. It also dawns on me a little bit when I think about my own personal songs of the summer is that the song of the summer is such a trick of nostalgia for me. Not that, I mean, many things are trick and nostalgia for me. But when I, so I just made a playlist of songs that, you know, that I love and that remind me of summer night specifically. And so many of them when I went back and did the math were from an era when I was younger. You know, when I, the summer I got my first car and I could control what I listened to with my windows down. or the summer when I was 13 and could buy my own records for the first time

or had enough money to kind of self-determine my own listening journey. And I don't know if I'm as interested in forming new memories in the immediate present with a song. So for example, when melodrama came out, I define it as an album of the summer now, but when it came out and I was listening to it in that summer, it didn't really register to me that this was defining my summer. It was just kind of a soundtrack to my movements.

And I wasn't thinking about it. And I sometimes think that the best song of the summer argument is, well, what's the music that hovered without you thinking about it? Now that's deep. Charlie and I are just like taking this in for a second. This is the retroactive song of summer theory, which I am. processing for the first time.

And I find it very compelling because I'm sort of applying it to my own experience. I feel like there's a lot of ink spilled on the prognostication of what will be Song of Summer. And yet, it's not always something that you can predict or even understand in the moment. It's only in retrospect that you go, oh, yeah, that was that moment in my life, that season. And it was defined by this song. And I can only see that clearly now with the benefit of, you know, maybe years of hindsight. It makes me appreciate, Hanif, your earlier argument where when you can smell the business decision being made,

I should say when you can hear the business decision being made, it kind of cheapens the capacity for us to just have it happen to us. Yeah, right? Because I think, and that's, I'm glad you said happened to us. So that's the thing that I'm most interested in with. how music lives through seasons because it is a happening, right? And I think when I, it, the music I'm listening to right now, I don't know if I'll return to it all summer, but if I do, I think I will do it based off of an impulse

that is almost beyond myself, right? It's like a decision-making process that's already happened. And there are scenes that require songs. in my mind. If I'm driving down the main street in my city towards the skyline at sunset, there is a song that I think serves that. And that decision's already been made for me because I'm looking to evoke an emotion that was already planted the first time I heard that song in that scenario. And so I'm returning to it to recreate the feeling I had once. Right. And to me, that's just, that is something that has happened to you. And if you're,

lucky can be a little outside your control. And you maybe don't realize it until September or October when you look back and you think, well, this song doesn't hit the same now the sun sets a little earlier. Or this song doesn't hit the same now that I got to wear like a fucking coat or whatever. But that's the thing, right? I think these things are not, for me, not defined in the moment, but are defined by the shifting of the moments to come. Hanif, thank you so much for joining us and breaking down the many layers of this Lord Jack.

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Hope we can do it again soon. Switched on Pop is produced by Nate Sloan. Megan Lubin and me, Charlie Harding, were edited by Julia Myers, engineered by Brandon McFarland, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, social media by Abby Barr. Our executive producers are Hannah Rosen and Ashok Karwa. We're a member of the Fox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. And this episode was made possible by JBL. Thanks so much to Hanif Abdurikib, a poet and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio, for joining us. Go check out Object of Sound. It's the show that brings you in tune with the music that shapes our culture. It's a hybrid form, blending the storytelling of a podcast with the beauty of freeform radio.

Hanif creates a custom playlist to go along with each episode of the show. Most recent episodes have featured Questlove and Lucy Dacus, who also joined us on Switched on Pop, so you know they have good taste. episodes come out weekly on Fridays, listen on MixCloud, Sonos Radio, and your favorite podcast app, and follow them at Object of Sound. Stay tuned, because next Tuesday, we are dropping another summer hit entry. It's City Girls Torculator with our guest, the brilliant Kira Gaunt. It's going to be such a fun discussion. We'll see you then. Anywhere you get podcasts, Spotify, Apple or our website Switched on Pop.com

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