The album creates a diasporic sound that foregrounds the origins of a plethora of musical genres.
The album feels more like an American Eagle ad than a documentation of an authentic transformational experience.
The year’s best singles found new, inventive means of correspondence between the past and the present.
The music video finds the 18-year-old Lorde carvorting with a married man.
As confident as they seem to burrow deeper into their own brand, there remains the edge of paranoia that drove some of their last album’s post-millennial tenser moments.
Listen to a playlist of the best singles of the year on YouTube and Spotify.