i understand, Lorde: "not everything feels like something else"

a tumblr-era quote to orient yourself for a pop star's return. on 'Virgin', "What Was That," and the cruel trick of recommendation culture

NOTE: I start commenting on Lorde, “What Was That”, ‘Solar Power’ and ‘Virgin’ in the second half of this piece. Stick with me!

ALSO NOTE: I drafted most of this piece pre-Rolling Stone profile Pamela Anderson sex tape controversy. If you want my hot take on that, I kick off the discussion in the comments!

ALSO ALSO NOTE: THIS BLOG WAS 100% WRITTEN IN BLOOD

I’m about to write something no one has ever written before: I love being an Apple Music user.

Not because of the interface or streaming fidelity, but solely because of the conversations I get to have about Big Tech’s effect on casual music listening. I live to conduct sneaky informational interviews about algorithms, recommendation bias, and the evolution of Spotify Wrapped!¹

On my first beach day of the season a few weeks ago, my friends and I laid on a towel and discussed the moody selection that Spotify bestowed upon us. I vented about how even though I think Spotify has a slight edge in terms of recommendation and discovery, none of the major platforms have been able to fully automate the curation of songs that sound similar to one another —despite the billions in investment dollars, a metric ton of listening data, and nearly a decade of music streaming monopolies.

It’s almost a bit creepy. Good recommendation at scale is the theoretical key to infinite profit, yet Apple Music will still look you in the face and tell you — if you enjoyed the work of this obscure, defunct indie-pop band from 2008,² be sure to check out this dad rock Arctic Monkeys album (that you’ve already heard, and no one likes)!

Amidst a faltering monoculture, Apple Music, Spotify, and their competitors recommend songs that regress toward a mean of what most people are listening to. I can’t tell if this regression is a feature driven by profits (to keep us in a cycle of frustrated searching with no end) or a bug (that means no one knows how to make a recommendation algorithm that actually works).

If Spotify and Apple Music cannot reliably³ say, “Here is a song that sounds somewhat like this other one you like,” then I’m starting to doubt if it’s even possible.

Or maybe, not everything feels like something else.

my and lorde’s pelvises not to scale (also not the beach day in question)

I rediscovered this Tumblr-era line of poetry turned out-of-context quote while scrolling through a TikTok comment section. The context? A creator making an all-familiar plea for a digital crowdsourcing project: “Does anyone know any songs that sound just like this???”

While playing the mental game of scrolling through the comments and critiquing the subpar sound-alike recommendations, the quote stuck to me. A simple reminder to answer a question we all have all the time: A glib but non-judgmental “not everything feels like something else.”

from the poem “Jessica gives me a chill pill” by Angie Sijun Lou

I’ve been mulling over these ideas for the past few weeks. Have I ever in my whole life loved a song so much, searched for one that made me feel the same way, and actually been satisfied with what I found? What about an album or a TV show, or a movie? I’ve gotten close, but never perfect. Even artists who are in conversation with one another or blatantly stealing can’t ever seem to capture the same kind of magic they originally seek, even if they do stumble upon another kind of magic along the way.

[Not to keep whacking Arctic Monkeys, but the lyric, “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes/Now look at the mess you made me make,” is exactly what I mean on that last point. I laughed extra hard, realizing this lyric is from that dad rock album I hate.]⁴

I had a piece gain some traction on here (Substack), nearly a year after I published it. On the reread, I noticed I was rubbing against this same question: Can anything feel like something else?:

the late-stage capitalism of taylor swift is eating itself

To me, what is so frustrating about the Taylor’s Version project is that it seems like we, as listeners, have to pretend we’re getting a 1 to 1 substitute for the original record when that just isn’t true. If you’ve put in enough hours with any original Taylor record, the recreations will never sound the same… It’s like Taylor Swift recording Taylor Swift cover albums, a good effort, and they don’t necessarily sound bad, but they don’t sound like the songs that changed country music. They don’t sound like the songs that changed pop. And they surely don’t sound like the songs that changed me.

In that same piece, I answer my question a little bit:

When I consider why I love a piece of art, I can’t help but wonder what it was like to make it. I imagine the interiority of an artist, how they arrived at a conclusion, what they wanted—needed—to get across…

If you spend even a few minutes, or I guess a few years, getting into the mindset of what it took to get any piece of art across the finish line, you start to understand why nothing would feel like anything else.

The sad and gorgeous truth is that the conditions and circumstances that made your favorite song are once-in-a-lifetime, never to be found again. The biggest lesson I’ve learned in pop cultural consumption is that every piece is singular, even when our recommendation culture tries to trick you into thinking it’s not.

Not everything, maybe nothing, feels like something else.

Funnily enough, “What Was That” actually does feel a lot like a younger Lorde.⁵ The synths, the syncopated delivery, and lyrics you have to chew on (vocally and mentally).

If you’re 4 years out from your last release, you basically have two choices for your lead single: A song that sounds mostly like something your fans have heard before or something that sounds completely different. If you’re selling tickets to a tour, attempting to own a whole season, and your last album received middling reviews, then playing it safe with your lead single is the obvious and smart choice.

via @LordeUpdatesBR

So, let’s address the solar-powered elephant in the room. Whenever I bring up that Solar Power didn’t “work” the same way Pure Heroine or Melodrama did, the other Lorde fans in the room assert how much they liked it. When the Ultrasound Tour presale opened, so-called Solar-Power-enjoyers proclaimed they deserved to be at the front of the ticketing queue. It is a very rare thing for a pop album to change the face of pop music as we know it. It’s an even rarer thing for a sophomore album to do the same. Solar Power can be considered a kind of pop greatness, but it’s not a crime to acknowledge it lacks something compared to Lorde’s prior projects. That lack is only made more obvious on the relisten.

When an artist I love lets me know that a new project is imminent, I try to prepare for it. I’ll listen to a whole discography in chronological order, leading up to the minute of a new drop. I’ll time my binge-watching in anticipation of show’s return after a long hiatus. I’ll get at least a little familiar with a director before booking a ticket to see a new (or old) release in theatres.

I feel like I’ve been preparing myself for Virgin for 4 years. I think I must listen to Solar Power for a few days straight every 6 months. While I understand the album and where it came from more each time I return, I also understand why it’s an album that washes over you more than it sticks to you. I’m part of a generation of young people who walk around with Pure Heroine and Melodrama all but tattooed on their foreheads.⁶ In 2025, even a die-hard fan can’t make the reasonable claim that Solar Power has a similar place in culture.

Given the amount of time Lorde has spent away from an album cycle, my assessment of what it was like to make Virgin is as follows: Lorde sits at the center of the pop star contradiction. The critical and popular reception to Solar Power is an artist’s blessing and curse—true feedback. Lorde has had the privilege of knowing exactly what her listeners think they want from her. Synth pop, stories of being sad at a party. Songs to dance to that make them feel intellectual but not pretentious.

The instinct that drives us back toward Melodrama is the same one that makes a fan tweet about how good an album will be when their favorite artist goes through a breakup or divorce. However, if every piece of pop culture is singular, we as consumers can’t pretend to know what an artist needs to do to take us somewhere with their art. It’s okay to chase a feeling, but not if you get disappointed when you inevitably find something that makes you start feeling something new.

Even though I’m a serial album-preparer, I think the biggest favor I can do for Virgin is come to it with a clean slate and an open mind. I’m not 16 or 20 anymore, and it’s not Lorde’s artistic responsibility to make me feel like I am.

I’m interested in seeing how Lorde balances the scales. Knowing what people want from you, but also knowing that if you don’t push the envelope, you’ll get told you’re playing it too safe.

“What Was That” is simply an exercise. She’s teasing us for thinking something new can survive under the expectations for what once was. If you get sad that not everything feels like something else (Melodrama)—look on the bright side—not everything feels like something else (Solar Power).

song of the blog!

If you want a taste of Virgin, spin some its producers and then get ready to contend with how ill-prepared you still are.

A few days before the Virgin announcement a random TikTok recommended me Fabiana Palladino. Algorithms aren’t fate, but it’s nice to get ahead of the curve…

1. fellow communication majors i see u

2. Black Kids mentioned!! two blogs in row!!

3. i found a cool article ab the spotify algorithm, but the thing i’m pointing out is how, as a user, none of these recommenders actually FEEL like they work!

4. this would make a great playlist prompt: artists ripping off other artists and accidentally making something new and brilliant along the way.

5. and that’s no mistake!

6. so funny Lorde ended up pointing this out in the Rolling Stone interview. like i said i understand her!