Lorde shares Solar Power bonus tracks “Helen Of Troy” and “Hold No Grudge”

Summer is just about to begin for New Zealander Lorde, and she welcomes the season in her homeland with two bonus tracks from her sunshine-worshipping record Solar Power.

“These songs were fun explorations on the album journey. They didn’t quite fit into the tracklist for whatever reason but they’re both big tunes,” Lorde says in a statement.

More free-flowing than the tracks that did land on Solar Power, themes come together in “Helen Of Troy” and “Hold No Grudge,” in which she continues to explore her pull toward our closest star and her journey as a young woman in the world.

Of “Helen of Troy” Lorde says, “We wrote it super quickly in the tiniest room at Westlake where we did a bunch of Melo and it was fun the whole time. It’s super off the cuff lyrically, almost ad-libbed, and you can hear me starting to figure out some album themes.”

A sense of carefreeness floats through “Hold No Grudge,” which is about making peace with the sudden dissolving of relationships and wishing happiness for someone, with or without her. She references her horoscope (she’s a Scorpio, whose birthday is just around the corner), in an attempt to break away from their reputation for holding on to grudges over a lifetime. Both tracks stick to the upper register of her voice found in the rest of Solar Power, with the similar approach with simplified arrangements.

Earlier this week, the artist also shared the music video for the pensive and brooding “Fallen Fruit,” casting darkness over the lush island that served as the stage for the record. The song navigates climate anxiety and the future the younger generation is about to be handed, left with the discards of nature and rotten fruit.

“In the ‘Solar Power’ video, you were introduced to the island as a lush paradise—glistening water, blue skies, not a grain of sand out of place (barring that pesky beach trash…). Cut to: humans doing as they do, getting greedy, treating the land with disrespect and stripping it of its beauty. There’ll always be another pristine place to start again, right?” Lorde says.

“The gardens that were once lush and fruitful are now on fire. The fishing boats are busted up and overturned. All that’s left of the peaches are their pits. Amid all that, my character makes a choice.”

Happy birthday, Scorpio season, and summertime Lorde!