Women on the Fringe: Representations of Depression in Lorde and Emily Dickinson

'Melodrama'

With her second album released in 2017, Melodrama, Lorde again challenges the frivolousness of pop music by exploring themes of mental illness, which fall outside of the realm of “ordinariness” usually prescribed to stars. A concept album that follows the events and feelings of a one-night house party, Melodrama melds songs about depression with a more pop-centric, electronic dance music style than was present on Pure Heroine, focusing on what Lorde calls in an interview “traditionally young, female emotions” that reflect the star’s own feelings of isolation and low self-esteem following a major breakup and her struggles to adapt to fame. Though about half of the songs on the album generally focus on the trauma of heartbreak (and, thus, are not incredibly unique within pop music), the other half of the album explores depression in a broader sense that evoke more timeless themes about human psychology present throughout all the arts and especially the poetry of Emily Dickinson. More specifically, the songs “Sober" and "Sober II (Melodrama)," “Liability,” "Supercut,” “Liability (Reprise),” and “Perfect Places” almost exactly correspond to some of Dickinson’s best-known poems numbered 407, 409, 269, 340, and 13, respectively.

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:

This page references: