We Finally Have a Great “Green” Song With Lorde’s “Fallen Fruit”
Resting at the very heart of her third album, “Fallen Fruit” is a lesson in how to make music in the Anthropocene
“The album is a celebration of the natural world, an attempt at immortalising the deep, transcendent feelings I have when I’m outdoors. In times of heartache, grief, deep love, or confusion, I look to the natural world for answers. I’ve learnt to breathe out, and tune in. This is what came through.”
Lorde introducing Solar Power in the SP Bulletin email dated 6/10
I’ve always been a sceptic of music made for a cause. Something about the often preachy nature of these songs just never felt as organic or natural as a song about love, life, or the movement they‘re supposed to embody.
The situation isn’t any different for “environmental” songs. Besides the occasional well-remembered tune (Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song”, for example), there isn’t a song that I can really point to when discussing the ever permeating nature of climate change in our day-to-day lives. This is in contrast to songs about racial justice and celebrating culture, which have in some instances been at the very heart of their respective movements.
Compare that to Lil Dicky’s well-intentioned yet caustic attempt at a “green” song, 2019’s “Earth”, which features a plethora of well-known artists, all seemingly there to simply fulfil their 15-second yearly quota of greenwashing (remember that their income bracket is responsible for more emissions than the bottom 50% of society).
Now that’s not to say we’ve never had great moments of personal retrospection about our role in the future of our surroundings. Rina Sawayama’s “XS” is a fantastic banger whose maximalism serves to enrich the diamond-crusted irony of capitalism. Johnny Marr’s “Armatopia” is a glistening pop tune where impending ecological armageddon meets blissfully unaware business-as-usual utopia. Even in 2021, The Weather Station’s standout single “Atlantic” is a somber retelling of the softer aspects of nature, albeit with a distinct tone of fear.
However, none of these songs have truly percolated through pop culture in a manner that stirs change. To put it simply, they’ve yet to break out of their niche music-first audiences and into broader conversations in entertainment or sustainability.
Hence, you can imagine my intense curiosity when it was revealed that Lorde was going to hone in on this very subject for her next album.
Lorde, for a very specific type of listener, is less of a musician and more of a cult leader. A soothsayer who could put indescribable emotions and circumstances into words for a generation struggling to do so. 2013’s Pure Heroine was a gloriously minimalistic breakthrough — a casual rejection of the “more is more” post-recession pop scene. 2017’s Melodrama became a heartbreak staple for the internet’s kids — fluorescent, determined, and composed of colours that exist beyond the human vision.
Now, deep into her twenties, her generation’s existential dreads stare at her — unwavering in their determination and seemingly omnipresent. Take it from an environmental student, there are plenty of reasons out there to be unable to sleep. Inspired by a trip to Antarctica, her third album Solar Power is a strange mix of sunshine, environmental urgency, and retrospections from a twenty-something woman who walks around New York without shoes.
“Fallen Fruit” is, at its core, a heartfelt eulogy being delivered at the funeral of our planet. “The great loss of our lives” is how Lorde described that sentiment. Alas, does it make any sense to sing about vivid visions of love and sorrow and whatever else people make music about when an apocalyptically existential crisis looms so close by? Does it really make sense to hope, she suggests, singing, “We had no idea the dreams we had were far too big”.
The song stops at those questions, almost as if it’s afraid to even consider the answers. Instead, it does what people have always done in the face of tragedy. It looks backwards to understand that all-important question — “why?”.
For Lorde, part of the responsibility rests on “the ones who came before us” who “were lifted on a wing”. The planet was a very different place a few decades ago. CO2 levels were lower, old-growth forests were still intact, consumerism was steady, and plastic was still a novelty. That first verse comprises a sentiment that’s only grown louder and louder since. This idea that those before us managed to take a perfectly functional planet and screwed it up to the extent that the next crew now have to somehow figure out how to put it all back together. It’s the pent up anger of a generation summed in a few lines.
Of course, environmental destruction isn’t a thing of the past. In the tour-de-force of a bridge, we are introduced to the ultra-wealthy. The kind who slip through multimillion-dollar cars and planes in the cover of night while being someone completely different in the light of day. The kind who would rather vape their way to Mars and restart with a seed instead of fixing the place that raised them. The sort of ageing egomaniac whose joyride releases more emissions than most people do in a lifetime.
Conjuring up images of the biblical garden of Eden, she croons about being left to dance on the fallen fruit while remembering apple trees that once “grew”. This whole environmental disaster situation is nothing more than an excruciatingly drawn-out re-enactment of Eve’s fateful bite on a planetary level. We seem to be well on course to take that bite, realise our mistake, and drop that half-bitten fruit of the knowledge of environmental destruction on the ground in horror as “Eden” begins to crumble away.
The emotional summit of this song is near the end, where all of this comes together. “How can I love what I know I am gonna lose?” is a heavy line that comes with a generation’s worth of despair. There are already enough things in life that we love that we will inevitably lose — child-like innocence, youth, the companions that move out of our space, the lover who becomes a stranger.
There’s really no reason to add another thing to that list, let alone the place that we call home.
Solar Power wasn’t received with the same feverish excitement as Melodrama or Pure Heroine. Its sparse instrumentation and distinct change of tone received mixed responses, ranging from “dazzling” to “sun-bleached”. It seems that “Fallen Fruit” has gotten caught in the cross-fire, with limited recognition for what it’s actually trying to say. However, it’s still the most notable musical reminder of the climate crisis we’ve had in some time, and a dang near perfect one if you ask me.
For everyone’s sake, I hope this song ages poorly. I would much rather look back on it and laugh at its absurdity than have to lament over what is probably by then just another prophecy gone unheeded.
