To fully understand “A world alone” I strongly believe that it's necessary to listen to the whole album. “A world alone” is track ten off “Pure Heroine”, an album on what it means to grow up and grow out of the teenage experience. Before I get into the verse-by-verse breakdown, I want to draw attention to my favorite thing about Lorde’s music. 

Aside from her lyricism, the thing I like most about the actual music is that whenever I listen to her, I feel like her music takes me somewhere. There's an inexplicable quality about her flow and rhythm that picks you up and carries you away. Listen to the song while you read this, maybe you’ll see what I mean. 

First verse:

“That slow burn, wait while it gets dark… Bruising the sun, I feel grown up with you in your car. I know it's dumb…”
Waiting for the sun to go down so you can finally get ready to go out with your friends is such a widely experienced situation, and it really does feel like a slow burn. Obviously you can’t go out with your friends when the sun is out, that would be absolutely ridiculous! I see the line “bruising the sun” as implying  twilight, where the sun is bruised purple. It’s not fully dark yet, but impatience is unavoidable when you’re 16. She knows it’s dumb, but she still feels “grown up” with him in his car. In the song you can hear a bit of vocal emphasis on “in your car”, as if to say the feeling of maturity is relative to the car. Although illogical, (what does maturity have to do with cars) that line of thought has a few fragments of truth. Just like Lorde does, I also feel older when I go driving with my friends. I scoff at myself- it's childish to assume maturity like that- but that's just how most 16 year olds feel. 

Second verse: 

“We both got a million bad habits to kick… Not sleeping is one. We're biting our nails, you're biting my lip…I'm biting my tongue”
She knows both of them are imperfect, but she also knows that their imperfections are just habits. “Not sleeping” is one of their bad habits, which I assume is a result of the fact that together, they go out late. They enable each other’s bad habits. The fact that she’s self aware of her bad habit and continues to do it regardless is a trademark of adolescent duality. Being 16, 17, and 18 is all about being in the “in between”. The second half of this verse gives some context to their relationship. Three phrases in parallel structure that all look the same, while each of the three offer a unique perspective. 

“We’re biting our nails” is another bad habit, and both of them indulge in it. People bite their nails when they're anxious or nervous or have nothing to say; wouldn’t two people who spend so much time together be comfortable with each other and their respective silence? 

“You’re biting my lip”. This all but explicitly states that they’re in some kind of in-between relationship: more than friends, less than dating. They're making out or hooking up or whatever you want to call it- and he's biting her lip. Not an act of violence or maliciousness, but an oddly intimate thing to do when you’re still anxious enough to bite your nails. 

“I’m biting my tongue”. Biting one’s tongue is a phrase that often means “silencing oneself”. Here, her unhappiness becomes undeniable. Then again, who’s ever happy with only seeing half of a person? 

Third verse:

“But people are talking, people are talking, but people are talking, people are talking”
Lorde made the stylistic choice to have pre-choruses. Pre-chorus verses are usually short and repetitive, with their implications evolving as the song progresses. The repetitive structure of pre-choruses typically works to emphasize their subject matter (build up the people and all of their talking) but in this case it has the exact opposite effect: all of the people and their respective “talk” fades into obscurity. 

Fourth verse (chorus):

“Raise a glass, 'cause I'm not done saying it.”
With the first line, Lorde seems to say: “Celebrate! I’m not done talking about it!”. Whatever she’s not done saying, it warrants celebration. Interestingly enough, what is being celebrated isn't the speech itself, but the fact that she's still saying something at all. 

The next lines go:

“They all wanna get rough, get away with it… Let 'em talk”
There's some implied language between those first two lines, and I've come up with two interpretations: 1) they all want to get rough and they get away with it or 2) they all want to get rough and to get away with it. The distinction between those two is that the first one is saying “they” want to get rough, and they get away with this wanting. The second one is saying that they want to get rough and want to get away with it, but it doesn’t clarify if they actually get rough or if they actually get away with it. Regardless, the verse continues with Lorde saying “let them talk” (mirroring the pre-chorus) as if to group the “wanters” from this verse and the “people” from the pre-chorus together, as one nondescript group. 

She puts said group off to the side, disregarding any significance it might have, and brings her attention back to the initial focus of the song: her and the boy with the car. In the final line of the chorus, she tells him to ignore them.

“cause we're dancing in this world alone. World alone, we’re alone”.
Whether they’re actually dancing is irrelevant, but the connotations of dancing is something fun and something wild. I know just as well as most other teenagers, that when you’re in this kind of dynamic (with the boy that only sees you when it’s dark out) the world seems to be nothing more than whatever space the two of you are taking up. So in reality, they’re not dancing, and they’re not in a world alone; but when you’re 16, what is real comes second to what feels real. 

Fifth verse:

“All my fake friends and all of their noise… Complain about work, they're studying business, I study the floor. And you haven't stopped smoking all night. Maybe the internet raised us… or maybe people are jerks”
It’s more common than it should be, to have fake friends. Whether they’re malicious and gossip, or if they’re just friends with you because you’re convenient, their conversation blends together and becomes an indecipherable mess of noise. 

Lorde goes on to say that they “complain about work”. Although this initially comes off as them complaining about their jobs, the people she’s talking about are also teenagers. In short: her fake friends are complaining about the work they have to do. Most of the time, especially in the school year, the easiest thing to do is complain. I don’t know why that is, and I wish it weren’t the case, but teenagers love complaints like the ocean loves the coastline. The verse continues with:

“They’re studying business, I study the floor… and you haven’t stopped smoking all night.”
This part feels a bit different from all the other lines I’ve seen so far. Up until this point, Lorde has been disregarding any significance the other people have; she’s scorned their talking and shoved them aside. This line interrupts her disdain. She seems to say: “They’re actually doing something, what can I do other than look down?”I think this little interruption where she compares herself to ‘them’ is another excellent example of what teenagers do. We will compare ourselves to people that we’d scorned just a minute before; we’ll drive ourselves crazy because of it. Before this part of the line ends, she hides her tiny moment of insecurity by drawing her attention back to the boy. She obviously doesn’t like that he’s been smoking all night, and to hear her direct that disapproval towards him instead of biting her tongue stands out in stark contrast from her typical behavior throughout the song. I previously mentioned that teenagers complain as a default because of how easy it is; I think she takes advantage of this ease, and complains about him smoking to distract from her sliver of vulnerability just a moment before. 

The last part of this verse is her musing with the idea that '“maybe the internet raised” all of ‘them’, and maybe that's what’s behind the poor social dynamics. “Or” she continues, “maybe people are jerks”. Maybe the people around her are inherently jerk-ish, and would be just as jerk-ish even if there was no internet at all. 

(Verses five and six are the pre-chorus and the chorus)

Verse seven:

“All the double-edged people into schemes, they make a mess, then go home and get clean. You're my best friend, and we're dancing in a world alone… World alone, we're all alone”
She compares the group of people to the commonly used phrase ‘double-edged sword’- another way of saying “lose-lose”. In this case, the double-edged nature of the people is that they negatively affect themselves and each other. As Lorde says: they get into schemes, they make a mess, then they go home and get clean. She phrases their toxic cycle in the same way one would detail their daily routine, as a way of saying: “they have the privilege of being toxic, mundane, and taken care of when they get home.” The double-edged people love recklessness as fire loves a library.  The second half of this verse floors me. Not even the second half- just the first four words when Lorde says “you’re my best friend”. It is absolutely crucial to the understanding of their dynamic that the significance of this is noted. Despite the fact that she is obviously getting the short end of the stick in their relationship, what with all her tongue-biting, he is still her best friend. Her best friend. She only sees him at night? He’s still her best friend. He won’t stop smoking? He’s still her best friend. He enables her bad habits? He's still her best friend. Me, along with a horde of teenage girls, feel this personal outrage, this righteous burn, that comes with experiencing this exact feeling. The dancing is the same, and the world is just as empty, and “he” is still the best friend. “World alone, we’re all alone” is the last part of this verse; taking on extra weight from the implications of the line before.

Verse eight (bridge):

“I know we're not everlasting. We're a train wreck waiting to happen. One day the blood won't flow so gladly… One day we'll all get still. Get still…”
Through the whole song, it's been implied that their relationship isn’t exactly the kind one should aspire to be in. Only in this line does Lorde explicitly confirm this, with her admitting to herself that they are a train wreck waiting to happen. Somewhere in the journey of the song, the magic of solitude in their world alone fades away. She comes down to earth from her clouds of delusion and acknowledges that the two of them are not everlasting. Not with each other, not on their own. When you're at the peak of youth, the edge of adolescence, it's almost impossible to not feel invincible. When you go driving with your friends, when you're doing something you’ve been looking forward to for years, when you're feeling alive, it's inconceivable that you are not immortal, that something about you is not everlasting. This line is where I see the most evidence of her growing up. She assumes that “one day the blood won't flow so gladly” and she's right. One day, the pros of being meaninglessly reckless will not outweigh the cons, and the constant movement will become exhausting. The bridge trails off into the pre-chorus and the chorus as if to say: “yes later, but yes now”, simultaneously acknowledging the present while procrastinating its implications for the future. 

(Verses nine and ten are the pre-chorus and the chorus, verse eleven is a repetition of verse seven)

Verse twelve (the last verse)  is a clone of the pre-chorus, save for the very last line:

“Let ‘em talk”.
The last line feels like Lorde has made her decision on how to operate around ‘them’. A decision that she wasn’t aware she needed to make, but a necessary one nonetheless. The finality of her deciding to let them talk is abrupt and absolute, as if she’s slamming a metaphorical door on it all.

My final thoughts:

Before the lyrics start, the song opens with a few simple chords, unique in their reverberating echo, isolating the listener, putting them in their personal world, alone. Being a teenager is about being contradictory, and Lorde’s album Pure Heroine is about being a teenager. Contrary to what one might initially assume, A world alone is not a song about being alone- it's a song about your choice to be alone, and what world that choice puts you in. Shaping the song around the idea that she is in a world alone while being with someone else, Lorde proves one reality can exist within the another: that someone can feel lonely in the company of another person while feeling just as lonely without them. 

The choice to be alone with one person, to separate herself from the rest of the world, does not result in solitary bliss, but in further isolation. The company she chose takes more than he gives, leaves her biting her tongue, and appears only half the time. While her companion is present, he is not altogether there, a fine distinction that adds dimension to what “alone” really means in the context of the song. 

Google defines the word alone as: “having no one else present”; in the dictionary sense, “alone” is determined by the presence (or lack) of other people. I would like to argue there’s another layer to this definition, that being alone is just as much a state of mind as it is relativity to other people. Although Lorde is never physically apart from anyone else at any given moment, she maintains the mindset of being alone; her physical relativity to the “double edged people” does not detract from her loneliness. She chose to fill her world with a population of one, leaving her a world so empty, a world so alone, that it's populated only by the echoes of what’s not there. 

There are countless take-aways to be taken away from this song, but I leave you with one: try to find beauty in the mundane world instead of leaving it in favor of a solitary one. Do not put yourself in a world, alone.