Talia Chetrit
Lorde‘s new single “Hammer” is the sonic equivalent of getting through your 20s, realizing actually you know nothing about the world and yourself, and saying “fuck it, let’s just do whatever.” “I’m ready to feel like I don’t have thе answers,” she sings on the song’s beating chorus, released today, June 20, as the final single of what’s shaping up to be a primal, career-pivoting project for the singer. It’s hands down the best single from the bunch.
“Hammer” is not explicitly about approaching your late 20s, but I’m interpreting it as an age-anthem of sorts. On Instagram, Lorde says the song is an “ode to city life and horniness.” But there are bits that also feel like they speak to the general loosening of the grip on life that happens when one begins to approach that big 3-0. “Some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man,” Lorde sings in the first verse, alluding to the gender explorations that inspired a lot of the forthcoming Virgin, out June 27. If Melodrama was Lorde crafting a tight encapsulation of early 20s heartbreak and control, Virgin, arriving before she turns 29, coincided with paring back and letting go. It’s a return to the “really essential, pure” version of herself, she told Rolling Stone.
That letting go is all over “Hammer” which bursts like a geyser, a furiously bubbling rush of drums built around a truly addictive vocal oscillation that makes it sound like Lorde is living it up right next to your ears. Like her previous single, “Man of the Year,” which slow-builds to a cathartic climax, there is a palpable sense of release on “Hammer,” like a too-tight valve has finally been loosened. Co-produced by the singer with Jim-E Stack, the song imbues that feeling on every level, lyrically filled with flashes of unrestrained euphoria: a fountain’s mist hitting the face, an impromptu piercing on Canal St., getting an aura photo taken, and not really caring about your gender identity today because does it really matter?
What’s most evident on the track is how the singer’s songwriting has evolved. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Lorde said that she strove to be “plain with language” this go around, and the effect this has had on her songwriting is most clear on “Hammer.” Sharp and vivid bursts of one-liners like “Don’t know if it’s love or ovulation” and “I’m making a wish when the needle goes in” build into a supercut-like montage of pure feeling. Dare I say they feel even more evocative and elemental-provoking than the lyrical musings of Melodrama? Like the thesis of “Hammer” — a 28-year-old’s assertion of freedom — all this effort proves to me that life only gets better after your 20s.
