Songfacts®:

• Lorde introduced her third album, Solar Power, on June 11, 2021 by sharing its title track. A sun-kissed acoustic-driven song, it finds the New Zealander celebrating the simple pleasures of a hot day on the beach. Said Lorde: "It's about that infectious, flirtatious summer energy that takes hold of us all, come June (or December, if you're a Southern Hemisphere baby like me)."
• The song is Lorde's first single since the 2017 album Melodrama. That record found her grappling with her emotions following her breakup with her longtime photographer boyfriend, James Lowe. She uses this song's chorus to signal she's starting a new, happier era.
  
  Forget all of the tears that you've cried
  It's over, over, over, over
  It's a new state of mind
  Are you coming, my baby?
  
  Lorde is inviting the listener to accompany her as she introduces us to the world of her third album.
• Back in 2019, Lorde paid a visit to Antarctica to learn about the climate crisis. She later shared with local news program Newshub that her trip to the polar continent inspired the title "Solar Power."
  
  "It's such an alien environment and it's so dazzling, straight away," she said. "I had this very distinct moment of thinking, 'This is the coolest your life will ever get. Like, this is it.' I actually decided on the album name right around that trip. Just coming back from that trip I thought: 'This is what it is.'"
• Writing in a newsletter e-mailed to her subscribers, Lorde said the song's theme of being invigorated by the sun's rays ties in with the rest of the album. She wrote that the Solar Power record will be a "celebration of the natural world, an attempt at immortalizing the deep, transcendent feelings I have when I'm outdoors."
• Lorde started work on the Solar Power record in December 2019 with her Melodrama producer, Jack Antonoff. Once the COVID-19 pandemic kicked in, the pair worked remotely in Auckland and Los Angeles.
• Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo provided background vocals. It is the first time Lorde has worked with either artist, but she returned the favor to Clairo when she sang on her single "Blouse."
• The other musicians are:
  
  Jack Antonoff: Electric 6-string guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, drums
  Matt Chamberlain: Percussion, drums, programmer
  Cole Kamen-Green: Trumpet
  Evan Smith: Saxophone
• Lorde told Apple Music's Zane Lowe on Primal Scream's 1990 dance rock single "Loaded" inspired her song, though she hadn't come across it before penning "Solar Power."
  
  "I had never heard Primal Scream in my life. I'd been told to check them out," Lorde said, adding that when she wrote the tune on the piano, she realized it sounded similar to the English band's track. "It's just one of those crazy things that they just were the spiritual forebears of the song."
  
  Lorde added that she spoke to Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie about the similarities between the two songs and he gave his blessing. "He was like, 'You know, these things happen, you caught a vibe that we caught years ago,'" she recounted.
• Lorde co-directed the video with Joel Kefali, the man behind the lens on her debut clip for "Royals." It sees the Kiwi songstress dancing on a beach, accompanied by other people at different intervals.
• Lorde said she and Kefaliy made a horde of visuals for the Solar Power record, where they built an entire cinematic universe on a beach. This one is the singer introducing her fans "to the world of the album and the videos and I kind of play like a quirky tour guide."
• Lorde debuted "Solar Power" live on July 15, 2021, performing the track on the rooftop of the Ed Sullivan Theater while appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
• Lorde originally conceived Solar Power as an acid album.
  
  Come on and let the bliss begin
  Blink three times when you feel it kicking in
  
  Speaking to the New York Times, Lorde said: "The references are so deep, conjuring that slight sort of cult leader, 'take the drug I'm about to put on your tongue' sort of world... I say, 'let the bliss begin', like, I'm a maniac."
  
  Asked if she was singing about taking LSD on this song, Lorde replied: "Well, I thought I was going to make this big acid record but I don't think it was an acid album. I had one bad acid experience in this album and was like meh, it's a weed album. It's one of my great weed albums."
• Phoebe Bridgers recorded her vocals remotely. Though she'd never met Lorde in person, she told Apple Music she still enjoyed the whole experience "I think that was one of my favorite parts of it... we were so unconnected to each other that borders and being in the same town as someone just stopped mattering completely," Bridgers said.
  
  "I had the same line of communication with Ella [Lorde] as I have with someone who lives right down the street from me," she added. "So that was kind of magical to exist in a weird, ethereal multi-verse for a while."
  
  "I had such a good time," Bridgers concluded. "Also, even just being inside that session and being able to look into somebody's brain like that was so fun."
• Lorde also recorded a version in te reo Maori, the indigenous language of New Zealand. It is one of five tracks she laid down for Te Ao Marama, a companion EP to Solar Power featuring five songs from the record sung entirely in te reo Maori. All proceeds from the EP are being donated to New Zealand-based charities Forest and Bird and Te Hua Kawariki Charitable Trust.
• Speaking on Therapuss with Jake Shane in 2025, Lorde said she looks back on Solar Power with both gratitude and a bit of clarity about how much the 2021 album didn't quite align with her true self.
  
  The Kiwi singer explained how the sun-soaked record emerged in the wake of an exhausting tour for her emotionally charged 2017 album Melodrama.
  
  "It was also so crazy touring Melodrama," she said. "I found it very intense... to be in this endless hardcore music [atmosphere] every night. I just wanted something light and easy after that."
  
  That quest for emotional ease ultimately shaped Solar Power's stripped-back, earthy sound. But with some distance, Lorde says she's realized that while making the album was important, it didn't fully reflect who she truly is.
  
  "I love Solar Power so much, and I truly needed to make it," she said, adding she wouldn't have done her more anthemic Virgin album if she hadn't made Solar Power. "It showed me that you have no choice but to be who you're supposed to be."
  
  Reflecting on the more elusive, spiritual persona she adopted during that era, Lorde added: "Me disappearing and being all wafty... I was like, actually, I don't think this is me."
  
  In other words, Solar Power might not have captured the "real" Lorde, but it helped her figure out where she does belong.