After weeks of cryptic teasers, a surprise park performance, and fan theories spiralling into full-blown obsession, Lorde has finally released her new single ‘What Was That’.
The song, which first sent fans into meltdown after she casually played it through a speaker on a folding table at Washington Square Park a few days ago, is now out officially. She released the song accompanied by a video that’s equal parts lo-fi, intimate, and unmistakably Lorde.
In the clip, she’s wearing a white button-down and jeans, wandering the streets of New York like someone trying to outrun her own feelings. She rides a bike. She looks straight into the camera. She even at one point crawls through a drain. She flickers between lost and luminous. The video also includes footage of the Washington Square Park moment itself. The chaotic crowd, the grainy filters, the moment New York police stepped in to shut it all down.
The whole thing feels like a memory you’re not sure you made up. Which, in classic Lorde fashion, is kind of the point.
‘What Was That’ arrives not as a flashy pop comeback, but something smaller and stranger. It’s woozy, half-whispered, soaked in reverb and regret. Less a song than a mood you get stuck in. It’s hard to pin down, which makes sense. She’s been teasing it for nearly a year now without ever really explaining what it is.
And still, she doesn’t. No release plan, no album announcement, no press quote. Just the song, a video, and an open tab of emotional ambiguity.
For an artist who once dropped surprise albums and disappeared for years, this kind of slow-burn rollout feels like a shift. Less spectacle, more sensation. And if this is the start of something bigger, it’s going to be strange, specific, and deeply personal.
Which, to be fair, is also just very Lorde.
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