Who is ‘David’, Lorde’s almighty power?
For an album that’s only 35 minutes in length, Virgin, the latest album from Lorde, packs a lot of punches. But then, when you get to the final track, ‘David’, it’s almost like receiving a killer blow.
On the one hand, the song is searingly honest in its attempts to reckon with the concept of domination and identity. But it’s also this that causes a pit in the stomach and the dizzying sickness, particularly induced in the line “I don’t belong to anyone”.
In this sense, the figure of ‘David’ is Lorde’s overarching power, the one on whom her worth is based and life depends. Yet the irony is that he never appears by name in the song, let alone being directly alluded to. It all leaves the question of who exactly ‘David’ is, as a man yielding so much gravitas but remaining seemingly still absent in the sense of reality.
Of course, the most obvious assumption to make is that ‘David’ is not actually just a physical person, just a figment of imagination representing power and domination, slapped with a male name to make the message all the more potent. And yes, while the crux of this theory is correct, there are, nevertheless, a number of real figures on which the character of ‘David’ can be drawn, taking influence from all around as the pinnacle of Lorde’s desire.
Firstly, there’s the notion of David and Goliath to contend with, where the heart of the power imbalance of the song gets its greatest allegorical similarity. It’s the story of overcoming the wrath of someone seemingly insurmountable compared to your own sense of self, and although much of the lyrics focus on the idea of subversion, the very fact that ‘David’ is the climax of the album gives rise to the idea that it is, in its own way, its own rebellion against these unsteady archetypes.
You can apply this in a number of different contexts – Lorde’s previous relationships, her gender identity, and her attachment to fame. There’s also the omniscient presence of the Michelangelo statue of the same name, iconically famed for its beacon of masculine strength and beauty. By this stage in the album, Lorde has been carved into a different figure than she started out as – think of the opening song, ‘Hammer’ – and as such, the idea of her being some kind of spectacle also weighs heavily in relation to her perceived sense of identity.
But there’s also someone else, a real person, who comes into the fray – admittedly almost god-like in himself, but who commanded the world in a way that was searingly, almost overwhelmingly, real. David Bowie was the man who could be credited as transforming Lorde’s career into a league of critical acclaim, cherry-picking her out of the realms of teen pop starlet and pinning all his hopes on her as “the future of music,” the sole artist on whom the trajectory of his musical transcendence rests.
Indeed, it was almost as if Bowie had some unspeakable ability to predict the future, as a year after his passing, she released her magnum opus, Melodrama, and things never looked back from there. But the best part of ten years on from that, and the pressure still purely idles on Lorde’s shoulders. She’s seen as the protégé of the giant, the lineage of the master, and could that load be proving too heavy to carry? After all, it is her duty to evolve as an artist and not just stay in the lanes of the assessments other people make of her. Bowie, in many ways, could be her Achilles heel; both a blessing and a curse.
Naturally, without pinning Lorde to a wall and attempting to elicit her secrets out of her, it’s very difficult to assert definitively who ‘David’ is. There’s no denying that he is a figure of power, strength, idolisation, and dominance, but the questions of his real intentions or purpose are still left unanswered. If one thing is clear, however, his presence is like watching your own sense of self tumbling away in slow motion, leaving destruction and tragedy in its wake.
Between mythological figures and rock stars, ‘David’ is everything, his subjects are nothing, and the complexes this creates are still in a process of being unfurled. A true pinnacle of lyrical mastery.
