Only a few days before her long anticipated third album Solar Power, Lorde shared her new song “Mood Ring.” The record is set to drop on August 20th via Republic Records. The album itself is centered around the overall hippie-like atmosphere of the 1960s and early ‘70s. The artist herself explains how much the flower child era and commune life inspired her to write and record the new album.
“One thing that occurred to me as a major parallel between that time and our time is our wellness culture and our culture of spirituality, pseudo-spirituality, wellness, pseudo-wellness. Things like eating a macro-biotic vegan diet or burning sage, keeping crystals, reading tarot cards or your horoscope,” the artist says. “These were all things that they were dabbling in back then, and that me and my girlfriends are dabbling in today.”
These themes are also very well reflected in the video to “Mood Ring.” We see Lorde in a tent surrounded by similarly dressed women. It definitely reflects the commune life. Lorde is also seen burning a Palo Santo stick, which is commonly used to clean negative energies, like sage.
The song just by itself, shows the satirical songwriting that Lorde is known for. Yes, she is celebrating the revived hippie culture and the new age spiritualism, but it’s by no means just a glorification of it. Lyrics like, “You can burn sage, and I’ll cleanse the crystals/We can get high, but only if the wind blows,” show how this community of spiritualists often seem free but still follow a strict set of rules that almost sound contradictory. The chorus, “I can’t feel a thing/ I keep looking at my mood ring/Tell me how I’m feeling,” also show how often the culture relies on tools to really tell them how they feel.
Photo credit: Sharon Alagna
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