Lorde will no longer be bringing her send-up of woo-woo crystal culture to our TV screens September 12. Due to what the show’s Twitter is calling “a change in production elements,†New Zealand’s premiere onion-ring critic will no longer be performing at the MTV 2021 Video Music Awards. To show there are no hard feelings, the tweet ended with a yellow heart emoji, consistent with Solar Power’s color scheme. That’s sweet. Olivia Rodrigo, Lil Nas X, Foo Fighters, a solo Chlöe, Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello, Twenty One Pilots, and Justin Bieber are still on the bill.
This is the second time in recent memory that Lorde elected not to sing at the VMAs. In 2017, battling a nasty flu, Lorde instead danced her way through her song “Homemade Dynamite.†In a since-deleted tweet recalled by Deadline, Lorde said of the performance, “you can’t tell in these pictures but i have the flu so bad i needed an IV #showgoeson #cutelilproppedupcorpse.†Perhaps Lorde is feeling poorly, and doesn’t want to be criticized as a cute li’l propped up corpse yet again. Or maybe this is another example of how Lorde is looking at the apparatus around contemporary fame, and turning her back on it with a warm “No 💛.â€