Anyone who has lost a pet knows that the bond is real and the grief can be as palpable as any other family member.

Spare a thought, then, for Lorde, whose plans for her new album appear to have been derailed while she goes into mourning for her pet dog.

The New Zealand singer-songwriter had been working on her highly anticipated follow-up to 2017’s hit Melodrama when her beloved dog, Pearl, died suddenly.

“Pearl came into my life in 2018, and almost immediately changed everything for me,” Lorde wrote in a note to fans.

“As anyone who has had the pleasure of raising a dog can understand, my life grew exponentially. Pearl brought an immeasurable amount of joy and purpose into my world.”

In the note, she described how the two of them had been inseparable: “We spent almost all our time alone together, him asleep under the piano as I played, or on the porch together, or in the park, where he became a blurry speck of gold in the green, far away.”

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Pearl, who was adopted by Lorde last year, had suffered various illnesses throughout his life, and the singer had been working with vets to pinpoint the issue.

“Everything was looking good,” she wrote. “But one day we woke up and I knew, in that way mothers do, that he was sicker than we had realised, and that we were nearing a point where his body wasn’t going to be able to cope. I rushed him to the specialists. Pearl had two cardiac arrests about an hour apart, and after the second one, he died. I was holding him when he went, and I know he knew that I was there.”

Lorde said Pearl’s death had been “indescribably painful” and had profoundly affected her.

“A light that was turned on for me has gone out,” she wrote. “The bright energy I was trying to communicate to you has gone, for now. He was instrumental to the discovery that was taking place. I felt he led me towards the ideas. And it’s going to take some time and recalibration, now that there’s no shepherd ahead of me, to see what the work is going to be.”

gingerbreadley (@breadleypasta) lorde being so incredibly open and vulnerable about her creative process is why i have so much respect for her. she discusses how it grows, how it’s stinted and what it needs to find footing forward and that’s why she continues to be one of my absolute favorite artists.

The singer asked for fans’ patience as the album, which she had announced was “in the oven” in June this year, looks to be postponed indefinitely – albeit not forever.

“As anyone who has felt loss can understand, there’s a door that opens that you step through, and everything is different on the other side. But when this great loss crystallises inside me, and my chest rebuilds around it, hopefully I’ll be able to finish up, and share it with you, and we’ll all grow together, as we always do.”