Lorde: ‘I’m only just scratching the surface of my powers’

She quit social media, embraced the feral and grieved for her beloved dog. Now rejuvenated, Lorde is back with a free-spirited new album - though there's a sinister side to its sunniness

Lorde, in case it wasn't obvious, has made her name on glorification. Ella Yelich-O'Connor was an aristocracy-obsessed 16-year-old when her imperiously cool debut album, 2013's Pure Heroine, elevated suburban New Zealand adolescence to pop echelons in which those kids had never previously seen themselves. In 2017, Melodrama cast post-breakup hedonism in glittering synths, dramatising one fabulous night on the cusp of adulthood as if it were Greek tragedy.

Her forthcoming third album, Solar Power, has humbler origins, especially for a songwriter who likes describing inspiration as divine". The loose, sunny instrumentation - inspired as much by Crosby, Stills & Nash as Nelly Furtado - mirrors a shift within the 24-year-old. When I got my dog, all of a sudden you're literally picking up shit, cleaning up vomit and not caring," she says cheerfully, video-calling from the start of a jet-lag-addled workday in Los Angeles.