Songfacts®:

• "What Was That" explores the aftermath of a breakup that has left Lorde feeling confused and disoriented. She wonders what the point of all that ecstatic connection was if it was just going to end like a dropped call.
• The romance in this song wasn't just some tepid fling. No, this was the full cinematic sweep: kissing for hours, concerts attended in tandem, ecstasy shared in both the emotional and pharmaceutical sense (she's been candid about MDMA use in the past). In short, Lorde gave him everything, and now there's a void where their shared life used to be.
• This sad banger was born in the emotional tailspin of late 2023. Lorde wrote on her website: "Every meal a battle. Flashbacks and waves. Feeling grief's vortex and letting it take me."
  
  This was heartbreak with the volume turned up. What came out of it when Lorde finally opened her mouth and hit record was "What Was That."
• The ex in question is believed to be music executive Justin Warren. They were seen together regularly starting around 2015, and by 2019 she was wearing a ring that set many tongues wagging. Marriage seemed not just possible, but probable. Then in 2023, Lorde quietly told fans she'd ended a long-term relationship. Suddenly everything made sense, except, of course, the relationship itself, which remained stubbornly senseless. Hence the question: What was that?
• Lorde wrote "What Was That" with Bon Iver collaborator Jim-E Stack, and the pair produced the track with Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan collaborator Dan Nigro. Stack handled piano, drums, and keyboards; Nigro added electric guitar and bass. Andrew Aged of the alternative R&B duo Inc. No World contributed additional electric guitar.
• "What Was That" is, in many ways, a spiritual sequel to Lorde's 2017 album Melodrama. From the first shimmering chords - similar to the opening of Melodrama's "Supercut" - you know you're back in familiar territory. That album, co-produced with Jack Antonoff and practically trembling with teenage intensity, now has a grown-up sibling. Here's how the callbacks manifest:
  
  1. There's MDMA in the backyard just like old times. The bittersweet buzz of chemically enhanced epiphanies is reminiscent of Melodrama's "Sober" and "Homemade Dynamite."
  
  2. "Since I was 17, I gave you everything," Lorde sings, which is both a direct confession and a callback to Melodrama's fiery self-proclamations ("I'm 19 and I'm on fire," Lorde declared back in "Perfect Places"). Now, she's cooling in the ashes.
  
  3. There are unmistakable echoes of Melodrama in the details too. The line, "Do you know you're still with me when I'm out with my friends? I stare at the painted faces that talk current affairs" feels like a grown-up variation on "But honey, I'll be seeing you wherever I go" from "Green Light." Except now Lorde is in a crowd, yet still occupied by memories that won't behave.
  
  4. Even the geography is nostalgic.
  
  When I'm in the blue light, down at Baby's All Right
  I face reality
  
  The reference to the Brooklyn venue Baby's All Right is a real-world callback to the New York party settings that inspired much of Melodrama.
• On April 22, 2025, Lorde summoned fans to Washington Square Park in New York City via Instagram with a photo of the park and the message "7 p.m."
  
  So many fans showed up that Lorde had to send out another message saying the cops were shutting them down and she had to tell them to disperse. Fans who stuck around were rewarded when she showed up and debuted "What Was That" on a portable sound system, dancing along to the song as the crowd joined in. Footage from the scene was used in the music video, which was quickly edited and released two days later.
• American photographer and visual artist Talia Chetrit directed the video. We see Lorde walking and biking around New York City before arriving in Washington Square and dancing rather vigorously with fans.
• Lorde edited the "What Was That?" music video herself immediately after hosting the surprise fan meet-up in a Sydney park. She stayed up editing until 3 a.m., turning raw footage from a chaotic, police-interrupted gathering into a fully finished video by the next day.