Songfacts®:

• "Secrets from a Girl (Who's Seen it All)" is a gentle, guitar-led song where Lorde talks to her younger self, trying to impart some of the things she learned. She knows her advice about growing up will probably go unheeded.
  
  You can take it if you want it, these are just
  Secrets from a girl who's seen it all
• The second verse finds Lorde talking to her younger self about two heartbreaking events.
  
  1) The end of a romantic relationship; maybe her 2015 breakup with longtime photographer boyfriend James Lowe. Lorde's Melodrama album tackled her emotions and insights stemming from the split.
  
  'Member all the hurt you would feel when you weren't desired?
  Doing anything for more touch
  
  2) Losing her beloved retriever cross, Pearl, after two cardiac arrests.
  
  'Member what you thought was grief before you got the call?
  Baby girl, no one's gonna feel the pain for you
  
  Lorde advises her younger self to remain optimistic, as she will find love again.
• Lorde wrote "Secrets From A Girl" after listening to her 2013 track "Ribs," about being afraid to grow up. She started thinking about who she was at that time of her life when she was so apprehensive about what was to come. Lorde took two of the chords from "Ribs" and reversed them for this song. "This is future me talking back to her sort of saying 'It's going to be okay,'" she told Spotify.
• Swedish singer-songwriter Robyn contributes the spoken-word outro, acting as a surreal flight attendant welcoming passengers to "Sadness." She tells the listeners that accepting our feelings of sorrow and pain can, in time, make them easier to carry. "I think there's just so much room in Robyn's world for being a hot mess or being this sort of ball of emotions shooting out in every direction," Lorde told NME.
  
  "I think about a song like 'Call Your Girlfriend' – she's not in a traditional hero's role; she's telling someone to break up with their girlfriend so they can be with her. But she's also having a huge amount of empathy for that other woman – that is some really big, complex adult s--t to be tackling in a dancefloor banger!"
• Solar Power producer Jack Antonoff co-wrote and co-produced the song with Lorde. Antonoff also played all the instruments on the track: keyboards, Mellotron, drums, 12-string acoustic guitar, acoustic guitar, 6-string electric guitar and bass.
• Lorde co-directed the video with Joel Kefali, the singer's collaborator on all her Solar Power clips. The visual finds the Kiwi singer taking a trip to the beach where she mixes with two clones of herself, each styled to look like she did in her younger years. The three Lordes featured in the video are named The Child, The Lover and The Gardener. They match those of the "Royals" star throughout her three album eras, from Pure Heroine to Melodrama to Solar Power.
  
  "This song is me in communication with another version of me, trying to send along the wisdom I've started to gather along the way," she said. "When we were plotting the video, Joel brought up some old film/TV tropes about groupings of women. It inspired me to identify three distinct parts of myself [who appear in the video], and imagine what would happen if these parts were able to meet."