The party’s long over. The ashes of the homemade dynamite lay scattered across the room. The traffic light on the road of Lorde’s mind, still red. The rivers of mascara have now dried into grey snakes that covered her cheeks. As she slowly passes out on her couch, her mind takes her to the shores of New Zealand. With her skin bathed in the Polynesian sun, the pulsating drums in the opening of Perfect Places begin.

As the concluding track of her highly acclaimed sophomore release Melodrama, Perfect Places certainly had large shoes to fill up. It had to pull together everything that had happened before. From her tearjerking confessions of not being able to move on and feeling guilty to reminiscing about the few good times she had with her ex to roaring in anger at the hurt he caused, it all had to be leading to somewhere.

In a crunch, Perfect Places addresses an idea that not many of her generation even think about, let alone write a song about. Unlike the rest of the album, her past relationship is not the spotlight of this song. At best, it’s a fleeting anecdote that breezes by the listener. This song revolves around her. Everything else is temporary. The alcohol, the music, the relationship, and, most importantly, the happiness she gets from indulging in all of those things. It brings up the question, what is permanent?

Like the music video, Lorde stands alone. She has no company. Her runs along the beach and her chaotic dances are witnessed only by the elements around her. Her parties last one night. The happiness from it, a few hours. By the time the sun rises, the pains of, in her words, ‘the first full year of adulthood’, come back. Like the rest of her generation, Lorde finds herself on thinner and thinner ice. Whether that be due to the demise of a relationship, the deaths of idolized stars, or just the regrets and bad decisions that follow her around.

Hence, she resorts to escapism. She drinks alcohol and suppresses these sorrows for a few hours. She hooks up with people to feel the warmth of a lover. She flirts with partygoers to get a taste of what it would feel like to go back in time, stop a bad relationship, and start over. ‘It’s just another graceless night’, she sings, the casualness of her tone reflecting the extent to which her mind had been desensitized to her actions. She knows it’s unhealthy. She’s ‘young and ashamed’. But she can’t stop. If she stops, the thin ice she stands on will collapse in an instant. In her words,