Lorde has sent an exclusive email to New Zealand subscribers of her newsletter with well wishes for the country after it was plunged into a COVID-19 alert level 4 lockdown earlier this week.
"I'm sending this bulletin to Kiwis only - if you're reading this, I guess you're in lockdown right now," she wrote on Friday - the same day her much-anticipated third album Solar Power dropped.
"What a f**king shitter. This thing just doesn't end. I hope you're safe, and with people who don't drive you up the wall. I hope you're having some spirited household chats about what's for lunch/dinner. Someone better have done some baking."
The 24-year-old explained she was writing the email from New York, where it was "humid and sweltering" as she promoted her new album.
"I feel sensitive and fragile, like a little Christmas ornament. Releasing shit is always scary, I'm scared of being misunderstood, and I really want the album to be what you want or need. I've been zipping round all day doing press and rehearsals, and my mind goes back to you twenty times a day. Friends send updates, but it's weird not being there right now."
Lorde also reminisced on how the beginning of the pandemic affected her work on Solar Power, explaining she had a "bizarre five or six months of waiting around at home, wondering when I could get into a studio again".
"I didn't work much at all in that time. I wasn't really having ideas. What I did was walk, every day, for two or three hours," she said.
"At first I read on the walks, because the streets were so empty I didn't need to look up that often. I can see now that this was classic embarrassing lockdown behaviour, but it really was nice, walking and reading in the chilly sun."
The Grammy winner added that she later switched to listening to music, much of which was demo recordings of the stalled songs she was writing for Solar Power.
"Like everyone else, lockdown brought up a bunch of crazy mental health shit for me; at home I'd feel emo, trapped, bad about my body, but on these long aimless walks I could feel the sun on my face and the cold clear air pumping in and out of my lungs, my legs pushing me forward, and it felt like the hypothesis of this weird thing I'd made was being reinforced, that going outside was medicine, or powerful magic, or something," she said.
"I'd come back down the road to my house feeling like I'd taken care of myself."
Lorde concluded by telling her Kiwi fans "it sucks that you're here again".
"I hope you take Solar Power for a walk today, the same way I did over and over between March and May, moving at pace through the cold air (and hopefully a bit of sun), your steps keeping time. It means so much to me that you're still here."
