The moment Lorde released “Royals”—the instantly inescapable 2013 track on which she contemplated the lavish lives of others from her less-than-luxe suburban viewpoint—she was catapulted into, well, royalty. Its genius—like everything Ella Yelich-O’Connor has released since—lay in pin-sharp, wise-before-her-years lyricism and powerfully inventive pop that sounded little like what had come before it (and rather a lot like much of what came after it). Bolstered by that haunting, otherworldly voice that can, at times, make it feel like Lorde is peering deep into your soul, this pop titan is as convincing as an ennui-tinged teen (“Tennis Court”) as she is a modern heartbreak laureate coming to set us all free (“Perfect Places”, “Green Light”). But for all the tight, HD pop of her teens (showcased on 2013’s debut album Pure Heroine and its 2017 successor Melodrama), 2021 brought a breezier edge. See the nostalgic “Solar Power” (a song, as she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, about “getting out there, getting outside, do your thing, do what you feel, keep it light, all of it”) and “Stoned at the Nail Salon”—a moving moment of folk melancholy on which Lorde contemplates just how far she’s come.