“What Was That” by Lorde

"What Was That" kicked open the door to Virgin, Lorde's fourth album, arriving in April 2025 as its lead single, and it sounds like someone replaying a breakup alone in a dark room with the synths turned up. She wrote it with Jim-E Stack and produced it with him and Dan Nigro, the two of them splitting guitars, bass, piano and synthesizers, while Stack's drums take their cue from Radiohead's "Reckoner". The words keep circling back to a relationship that's over and the wreckage it left, all of it riding electropop that pulses rather than pounds.

The video, which she co-directed with Terrence O'Connor, trails her alone across New York until it breaks into an impromptu dance in Washington Square Park, fans filming all around her. Back home in New Zealand it went to number one, and Rolling Stone counted it among the year's best songs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.