Lorde, And The Expectations We Have For Artists
This past week, Lorde came out with her fourth album, “Virgin”; the album has been received with mixed reviews from critics and fans, as Lorde branches further and further out from the kind of music she established a base with. Lorde’s third album, “Solar Power”, was met with similar extremes, leaving the population quite divided. While some seem to laud her ability to shift through different genres, moods, and phases, others seemed to find the diversion from her typical sound jarring and unwelcome.
This leads into a larger conversation about what people expect from the artists they listen to; is it fair to expect one uniform sound and message throughout an artist’s career or is watching them change also a part of being a fan of someone? Nowadays, perhaps more than ever, musicians must exist in this ambiguous space where they are simultaneously creators and inventors of new facets, sounds, and experiences, while remaining at the same comfortable, reachable place where fans first found them. This is exemplified through the juxtaposition between critical reception of Lorde’s newest albums, and the criticism that Lana Del Rey has received throughout the years.
Lorde is criticized for being too different; too unreachable to her original fans. Meanwhile Del Rey has often been criticized for the opposite— while her music was originally a unique respite during an era of high-energy club music, it’s now referred to as “repetitive” or “derivitive”. Perhaps both critiques, though vastly different in content, come from the same place: an expectation for artists and music to come in easily consumable packages. This, however, is not a productive way to consume music, and evidentially an odd way to express support for an artist. Throughout their careers, any artist is subject to any host of criticism— but it is this criticism of artistry itself that harms both creator and consumer.