Lorde lures hundreds with shambolic New York pop-up to ask: "What Was That?"

The abrupt cancellation of the impromptu pop-up caused disappointment and disbelief for some of the gathered crowd, many of whom had staked out their spots for hours already. A wave of people left the scene in a mass exodus captured on social media. Others stayed and threw their own Lorde dance party in the park. Around 8 PM, true believers who stuck around were rewarded when Dev Hynes (an expected producer on Lorde’s new album who performs as Blood Orange) ran through the crowd, carting a speaker bumping the new track. Fans with phones out to film sprinted after the speaker as Hynes led them out of the park like the Pied Piper, eventually bringing them outside Electric Lady Studios. 

The loyalists circled back to the park and were rewarded when Lorde finally appeared, posting up next to a speaker planted in the middle of the Washington Square Park fountain. She played her new song “What Was That,” the lead single off her as-yet-unannounced fourth album, and danced along as the remaining crowd captured the moment on camera. “I’m missing you/And all the things we used to do/MDMA in the back garden, blow our pupils up/We kissed for hours straight but baby, what was that?/I remember saying then/This is the best cigarette of my life/Well I want you just like that,” the chorus goes. As she sings in the previously released snippet, “Since l was seventeen, I gave you everything/Now, we wake from a dream/Well baby, what was that?”

Whether the unsanctioned pop-up will be considered punk rock guerrilla marketing or a disorganized mess may depend on the rest of the album rollout. “What Was That” officially drops on Friday, but you can find plenty of footage from the Washington Square Park premiere online.