Songfacts®:

• Lorde pulls back the curtain on her Solar Power album with this opening track. Summing up the record's theme, the song's message is that rather than looking to celebrities like the New Zealand singer for answers, we should turn to the natural world. She told The Guardian it's an odd place to start, "But I know enough about how people view me - we're taught to view famous people as gods now – and I just wanted to dismantle that."
• The first verse recounts Lorde's rise from a New Zealand bush girl to a "teen millionaire." She talks of the overwhelming pressure and anxiety she endured as a famous singer still in her formative years.
• Lorde sets the second verse at the 2016 Met Gala, where the teen was one of many superstars present. She recalls stealing a fork to show her mother, showing she still is the same down-to-earth Kiwi girl.
• The chorus acts as a thesis statement for the album, as Lorde rejects being seen as a role model. Instead, she says we should let the sun show us "the path."
• This was the first song Lorde wrote for Solar Power; she always knew it would be the opening track. The "Royals" singer told Apple Music she wrote it to bring her fans "right up to speed" on her frame of mind. "As I get older, I feel the absurd nature of our modern life more every day, and some of the images in this song really play into that," she explained.
  
  Lorde added that she's unworthy of the devotion that comes to people like her. She wanted to disengage from that and say, "It's not going to be me. I'm sorry. Let's redirect."
• Lorde wrote the song by herself. She co-produced it with her go-to producer, Jack Antonoff, and Malay, who is best known for his work on Frank Ocean's Channel Orange album.
• Lorde dropped a video for the song on June 21, 2022, midsummer's day in the Northern Hemisphere. It serves as a prequel to her "Solar Power" clip. "You see my character joining her friends and family on the island where they've chosen to start life anew," she explained, "arriving in her trademark suit and quickly being transformed by nature's strange magic."