The pop icon makes a surprise appearance as the flight attendant on ‘Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All)’
On Lorde’s latest album, Solar Power, the musician invites a host of other voices onto her songs for the first time. Tracks such as “Stoned at the Nail Salon”, for example, feature backing vocals from no less that Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo, while “Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All)” includes spoken word from Robyn.
The latter cameo isn’t completely unsurprising, given Lorde’s well-documented admiration for Robyn. While working on Melodrama in 2016, she emerged to perform a haunting version of the pop icon’s “Hang With Me”, and has gone on record citing “Dancing On My Own” as a “perfect” track.
“Secrets From a Girl”, meanwhile, casts Robyn as an air hostess for “Strange Airlines”. “Welcome to sadness,” she says. “The temperature is unbearable until you face it / Thank you for flying with Strange Airlines / I will be your tour guide today.”
“Your emotional baggage can be picked up at carousel number two / Please be careful so that it doesn’t fall onto someone you love / When we’ve reached your final destination, I will leave you to it / You’ll be fine.”
Speaking in a new interview with NME, Lorde has opened up further about Robyn’s influence, following her inclusion on the new record. “I think there’s just so much room in Robyn’s world for being a hot mess,” she says, “or being this sort of ball of emotions shooting out in every direction.”
Lorde goes on to highlight the 2010 Body Talk track “Call Your Girlfriend” in particular. “She’s not in a traditional hero’s role,” the singer says. “She’s telling someone to break up with their girlfriend so they can be with her. But she’s also having a huge amount of empathy for that other woman.”
“That is some really big, complex adult shit to be tackling in a dancefloor banger!”
Lorde has also recently spoken out about another of her collaborators, longtime producer Jack Antonoff. Specifically, she’s criticised the way that their relationship is framed in the public eye, saying: “I haven’t made a Jack Antonoff record. I’ve made a Lorde record and he’s helped me make it and very much deferred to me on production and arrangement. Jack would agree with this. To give him that amount of credit is frankly insulting.”
Solar Power arrived in full last week, following summery visuals for “Mood Ring” and the title track (which also features in a pretty convincing, if unofficial, Midsommar music video on YouTube). Revisit the Robyn-featuring “Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All)” below.