here’s a paraphrase of a commentary on it I agree with:
Almost 10 years after she released her huge debut EP, Lorde has become the famous, rich, adored celebrity that she was singing about then. And it really does show here on this album. Lorde sings about stuff like her many gowns and robes, her love for sunny beaches and traveling, and her stories about getting on planes. In short, she has absolutely nothing interesting to say; this album is full of bored performances, bored lyrics with boring stories, faux-relateable experiences, and the emotions that she occasionally tries to bring forward sound forced and shallow.
I could have sworn I read something 7 years ago that heavily implied her original collaborator, a friend of hers from high school, actually wrote a lot of her early stuff and Lorde hung her out to dry when she started to get famous. Which explains why everything after her first album is such a drop in songwriting quality
You mean joel little?