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If A New Lorde Song Comes Out And You Don't Hear It, Is It Still The Weekend?

Lorde's long-awaited second album, Melodrama, isn't out until June 16, but she's already released four songs to tide fans over: "Green Light," "Liability," "Perfect Places" and now "Sober," an stormy epic about risk and regret that's timed perfectly to coincide with the start of an eventful weekend.

"These are the games of the weekend," Lorde seethes, setting the stage for blurred boundaries and an eventual reckoning. The song's central conflict boils down to uncertain consequences — "What will we do when we're sober?" — but "Sober" wouldn't be a summer jam if it didn't advocate throwing caution to the wind just a little bit.

Melodrama comes out June 16 via LAVA/Republic.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)