7

Thursday, June 22, 2017

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

By JACK BRANDON

 Daily Arts Writer

When Lorde won the Billboard 

Music Award for Top Rock Song, 
with “Royals” in 2014, she turned 
her fists into rocker horns with a 
confused expression on her face. 
Her smash single had won her an 
award in a category that not even 
she thought she deserved to place 
in — a testament to her artistry, 
skill and charm. Her sophomore 
album Melodrama was released on 
June 16th, a culmination of four 
years of work, crafted by a young 
artist who isn’t afraid to poke fun 
at herself.

Despite 
being 
the 
dreaded 

sophomore album, Melodrama sur-
passes Pure Heroine creatively. The 
persona of Lorde has outgrown her 
teenage ennui and has developed 
into a thoughtful, tender young 
adult unafraid to embrace her 
experience. While songs off Pure 
Heroine repeat a similar theme in 
a different manner, Melodrama 
offers a complete experience of 
thought, emotion and expression.

The sound of her sophomore 

album is rich and diverse. Singles 
“Green Light” and “Perfect Places” 
are energetic tracks comprised 
of driving percussion and heavy 
synth. Others like “Liability” and 
“Writer in the Dark” are made 
soley by the accompaniment of gui-
tar or piano to Lorde’s voice. These 
emotional ballads are reminiscent 
of the compositions that dominat-
ed Pure Heroine, but brought to 
a new level by traditional instru-
ments. Melodrama takes the old 
formula, mixes it up and adds 
another step.

Vocally, Lorde stretches herself 

to embody a distinct feeling on 
each song. Her voice starts husky 
on the first track, but by the pre-
chorus of “Homemade Dynamite,” 
it has morphed into breathy sighs. 
On the deeply poignant ballad 
“Liability,” Lorde croons in a full, 
warm voice to contrast the cold 
sounds of the piano. By “Writer 
in the Dark,” she coughs and spits 
each note out, her voice frayed. 
These two tracks demonstrate 
the remarkable nuance in Lorde’s 
delivery that is evocative and pow-
erful. On “Hard Feelings/Love-
less” and “Liability (Reprise),” 
Lorde’s voice is warped and mold-
ed by a harmonizer.

Apart 
from 
her 
impressive 

growth as a singer, Lorde has cata-
pulted to new heights as a com-
positional artist. She manages to 
balance the tragedy and comedy 
of the break-up that inspired the 
record without seeming “melodra-
matic” or insincere. Lines like “So 
they pull back, make other plans 
/ I understand, I’m a liability” are 
mocked by “Are you lost in us? / 
Have another drink get lost in us 
/ This is how we get notorious.” 
While in opposition, there’s a ten-
derness and an edge to Lorde’s 
candor, that by some sleight of 
hand rub together to make magic. 
Other moments reveal Lorde’s 
flirtatious and adventurous side, 
as written on “Homemade Dyna-
mite”: “See me rolling, showing 
someone else love / Hands under 
your t-shirt / Know I think you’re 
awesome, right?” She is far from 
the 16-year-old girl who sang of 
“craving a different kind of buzz” 
four years earlier.

Lorde has always shone as a 

lyricist; every line off Pure Hero-
ine is poetry, and Melodrama is no 
exception. Multiple songs ditch 
traditional rhyme schemes in 
favor of slant rhymes and from 
her synthesia comes vivid and 
miraculous images: “I’d get your 
friend to drive, but he can hardly 
see / We’ll end up painted on the 
road, red and chrome, all the bro-
ken glass sparkling / I guess we’re 
partying.” Always incisive, Lorde 
critiques teen culture while impli-
cating 
herself. 

However, we can 
take the bitter 
with the sweet, 
as 
so 
many 

songs are heart-
achingly tender: 
“Blow all my friendships / To sit 
in hell with you / But we’re the 
greatest / They’ll hang us in The 
Louvre.”

In a pop music market that 

often feels dry and repetitive, 
Lorde is as refreshing and origi-
nal as she was four years ago. Her 
work has an element of artistry 
that eschews the mainstream idea 
of pop stardom. Melodrama, just 
like Pure Heroine, is filled with 
hidden treasures: keen insight, 
a full heart and youthful charm. 
Lorde is an artist you can put faith 
in. 

By NISA KHAN

Summer Editor in Chief

“What you need to know is that 

my life is split in two, cleaved not so 
neatly. There is the before and the 
after. Before I gained weight. After 
I gained weight. Before I was raped. 
After I was raped.”

“I began to eat to change my body. 

I was willful in this.”

Renowned writer Roxane Gay 

presented her new book, “Hunger: 
A Memoir of (My) Body,” to a crowd 
of over a thousand gathered in Hill 
Auditorium this past Friday, where 
she discussed her process writing 
the difficult moments of her life as 
well as the social faults in approach-
ing weight and sexault assault.

The event was hosted by Lite-

rati Bookstore. According to event 
organizers, “Hunger” is already the 
store’s bestselling book. Gay is well 
known for her series of essays titled 
“Bad Feminist” and her novel “Ayiti,” 
and she is the first Black female lead 
author for Marvel in a Black Panther 
series “Wakanda.”

“So I have a new book out called 

‘Hunger.’ Because I’m a masochist,” 
she said. “But really, this is a book 
about my body. Often times when 
you are overweight, or fat, your body 
becomes a public text, and people 
project a lot of bullshit about your 
body. A lot of things like why you’re 
fat, why you don’t lose weight, and 
so with this book, I wanted to rede-
scribe the narrative of my own body. 
To tell the story about my body in my 
own words.”

Two passages were read from 

“Hunger.” One is about her time 
with her physical trainer — “I have 
a membership to Planet Fitness, 
although I have never visited. Basi-
cally I donate $19.99 to Planet Fit-
ness every month,” Gay said.

The other is her search for and 

imagining the confrontation with 
the man who assaulted her years 
later. Gay was 12 years old when her 
classmate, along with several other 
boys, raped her.

“I Googled him when I wrote this 

book. I don’t know why. Or I do,” she 
read. “I sat for hours, staring at his 
picture on the webpage on his com-
pany’s website. It nauseates me. I 
can smell him.”

She admits that writing “Hun-

ger,” revealing her vulnerabilities, 
made the process much more dif-

ficult than her previous work. Gay 
explained writing usually comes 
more naturally to her — therefore, 
the hesitancy she was facing in 
writing “Hunger” was a new expe-
rience.

“I am used to words coming 

quickly. With this book... when I 
was trying to figure out the scope 
of this book, I thought and thought 
and thought. When I got some-
where where it made me uncom-
fortable, I would stop,” Gay said. 
“And so there was nothing to write, 
because there was nothing going 
on in my head at all. And so ‘I don’t 
want to go there.’ And so, I found 
myself forcing myself to go to those 
places I did not want to go.” 

“Oh my God, it was just coming 

out in the most painful paragraphs. 
And for me, it was a foreign experi-
ence. Usually it’s great, but this was 
just shitty paragraph after shitty 
paragraph. I kept looking at it like, 
‘Who is this person?’”

While the new memoir revealed 

much of Gay’s personal thoughts, 
she also set up borders for topics 
she would stray away from such as 
details about her relationships or 
some of her experiences. 

“I really stick to my gut where 

my boundaries are concerned... I 
remind myself, I am allowed to have 
boundaries,” she said. “I am allowed 
to tell people ‘no,’ even though they 
are good people. You don’t have to 
give people everything they want.”

“Hunger” was delayed, forcing 

Gay to write it faster.

“It was just difficult. I think fac-

ing yourself is difficult,” she said. 
“Looking at your body and looking 
at all of the baggage I have been car-
rying along with being fat, baggage 
that is not mine to carry but I car-
ried nonetheless, was challenging... 
It was worth the delay. Anything I 
would have put out June 2016 would 
have been mediocre at best.”

One audience member, who said 

she was nervous in writing a memoir 
on a similar topic, asked if Gay had 
any fear of her attacker’s retaliation. 
Gay explained she kept all of the 
details of the assault vague and used 
pseudonyms.

“Lastly, I would say that we 

often fear retaliation, and it’s totally 
understandable... one of the things 
you can try to do is look that fear for 
what it is and try not to let that fear 
be an obstacle to writing what needs 

to be written,” she answered.

Reactions to weight were a cen-

tral point of discussion — especially 
the term “fat”, and how it has been 
fashioned to become an insult.

“What they are conceiving is that 

‘fat’ is an insult. That I am insulting 
myself,” she said.

However, Gay finds the term 

“overweight” to be worse — 
implying that there is a normal 
weight. “Obese” or other medical 
terms have also left her with neg-
ative experience from doctors.

“As a fat, Black woman, I am 

sometimes degendered. I am 
called ‘sir.’ Every day, I am called 
‘sir.’ Which is weird, because I 
have huge boobs. It’s just like, 
they are magnificent,” she said, 
explaining the conception that 
being fat takes away feminin-
ity. “There is always this cultural 
baggage in this intersection of 
Blackness and fatness. And, it’s 
challenging. It’s really challeng-
ing... But I find that the Black 
community tends to be far more 
accepting of body diversity.”

Throughout the event, Gay 

was also asked about her opin-
ions on Black Panther (“It was 
so 
sexy.”), 
the 
Bachelorette 

(thrilled to see “31 mediocre 
white men” court an exceptional 
Black woman. “It’s about god-
damn time.” “Collectively, those 
31 dudes make half a good man.”), 
and the Handmaiden’s Tale (one 
of Gay’s favorite books, accord-
ing to an audience member. Gay 
said she loved the first episodes, 
but stopped watching in disbe-
lief after hearing the cast say it 
wasn’t a feminist work)

As the event neared an end, 

Gay was asked how many users 
she blocked on her active Twit-
ter (her bio: “If you clap, I clap 
back.”): over 2,700 users. “I 
block people every single day. 
Because people are trash.”

When 
asked 
if 
“Hunger” 

allowed 
some 
healing, 
Gay 

explained that in the beginning 
of writing, she would have said 
“no,” as she had to look at dif-
ficult stages of her life.

“I feel now I am finally in a 

position in my life to truly move 
forward in a way I haven’t been 
before,” she said. “So yes, it 
turns out that writing this book 
was healing.”

Lorde is magical 
on ‘Melodrama’

Roxane Gay gives powerful 
discussion about new book

COMMUNITY CULTURE EVENT
MUSIC REVIEW

Melodrama 

Lorde

Republic Records

