Lorde Gets No Better ...

Seeing as we haven't entered the New Year yet, it was a bit of a surprise to come across some new material from Lorde. She has ben one of the most outstanding and successful new acts of the year, and whilst her album managed to creep into our list of the year, she hasn't made nearly as much of an impact on her new single, No Better.
Something about this isn't nearly as catchy as the songs she's managed to propel onto the world this year. It blasts in with an immediate vocal, somewhat different to the ordinary pop single these days, and then moves over onto more drumming and percussion than normal ... this would usually not be much of a problem, but the melody of it all doesn't seem to change all that much and, that, in turn, manages to leave a bit of a void.
The chorus, or what we believe to be the chorus, takes Lorde to going much deeper than normal, and that really marks the song badly. It doesn't, therefore, climax much at all, and as we said, manages to leave a bit of a whole in what you're listening to.
We believe this to have "Promo" written all over it. She wants to keep her name up in lights, but doesn't really want to be giving out all of her best material yet. However, Promo songs can be such a hindrance that she needs to be mighty careful. If a song really isn't that good in comparison to the norm, then she'll drop off the radar altogether ... we mean, look at Rizzle Kicks, their promo for their latest album was terrible against the album itself and, therefore, the album didn't actually do all that well.
Paul.