Solar Power is the third studio album by New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde. It was released on 20 August 2021 by Universal. Inspired by the death of her retriever mix dog and her visit to Antarctica in 2019, the album was written with producer Jack Antonoff to capture solipsism and summer escapism, mainly focused on Lorde's leisure time in her homeland New Zealand, simultaneously expressing her disdain for fame and celebrity culture.

Classified by Lorde as her "weed album", Solar Power is a psychedelic pop and indie folk effort built around acoustic guitar arrangements, marking a departure from the electronic-based music of her previous works. It was met by polarised reviews from music critics, who commended Lorde's matured vocals, but were divided over its songwriting and production. Lorde later described the response to the record as "really confounding" and "painful". The album was led by its lead single and title track, "Solar Power", followed by "Stoned at the Nail Salon", "Mood Ring", and "Fallen Fruit".

Commercially, Solar Power reached number one in Australia and New Zealand, and charted inside the top ten in various countries. Lorde opted against manufacturing CDs for environmental reasons, releasing Solar Power to digital music platforms, streaming services, and as vinyl LPs only. A Māori-language EP, titled Te Ao Mārama, was released on 9 September 2021 as a companion project to Solar Power. It consists of Māori versions of five tracks from the album. To promote the album, Lorde embarked on her third concert tour, the Solar Power Tour.

After concluding the North American leg of the Melodrama World Tour in May 2018, Lorde cleared out all her social media, leaving only three Instagram pictures and two tweets visible on her accounts. In November 2018, Lorde revealed in an email sent to fans via her newsletter subscription that she started learning how to play the piano and was outlining ideas for her forthcoming record. The singer made her first public performance since the conclusion of her tour in April 2019 at a benefit concert for victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings, which had occurred the previous month. Later that year, Lorde disclosed that she was indefinitely postponing work on her album due to the death of her dog Pearl, a retriever mix, after he suffered two cardiac arrests.

The singer expressed interest in visiting Antarctica since she was a child. When she was 16, the CEO of government agency Antarctica New Zealand tried to convince Lorde to visit the area. In February 2019, Lorde visited Scott Base, Antarctica for five days with the help of the government agency. To prepare for the harsh weather conditions, the singer was required to receive vaccinations, pass medical exams, and wear ECW gear before boarding an army jet. While visiting, the singer shadowed scientists, observed orcas, surveyed Adélie penguins, and performed weather recordings. She states that the abrupt transition from leaving the "beach and tans" in New Zealand summer to a "hostile, cold environment and back to the beach", provided influence in developing the themes of the album. The title of the album came to her as she returned home to New Zealand.

In March 2020, Australian radio station Triple J revealed the ranking spot of her 2013 song "Royals" on their Hottest 100 of the Decade contest. Lorde called in from the office of her New Zealand record label and revealed that "bits and pieces" of her upcoming album were "starting to take a very exciting shape". Two months later, the singer announced via her subscription newsletter that she was finishing Solar Power, still untitled at the time, and that she kept in communication with American producer Jack Antonoff, who assisted in the songwriting and production of her previous record. In July 2020, American producer Malay, who co-produced three songs on her last album, revealed to Reverb that he flew frequently to New Zealand to work with Lorde before the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike their production sessions on Melodrama, Malay and the singer "started from zero", which he described as "really unique and fun".

During a Beats 1 interview with New Zealand radio DJ Zane Lowe in November 2017, Lorde expressed her desire to improve her production and engineering skills within the following two years, and write and produce an entire record by herself within the next five years. However, after a tumultuous tour schedule and writing an "intense album", Lorde said she "needed to just go and slow down at home". By early 2019, the singer transitioned into domestic life, where she took an interest in cooking, gardening, swimming and walking. Lorde also began to reconnect with her family and friends in New Zealand, who she missed after experiencing homesickness while on tour. This provided the singer with inspiration for the lyrical content of the album, where she opted to write about the ordinary aspects of her life.

Solar Power was described by Lorde as a "celebration of the natural world." She compared her experience spending time outdoors and in the sun as seeing God, though not a Christian God, but "something higher". Furthermore, in an interview with Sean Evans for Hot Ones, the singer called Solar Power a sun worship album. While writing the album, Lorde visualized a utopia which she dubbed the "Island". This allowed her to take a different songwriting and intellectual perspective which culminated in her searching for "broader and clearer" viewpoints than her own. She named American singer Joni Mitchell as an influence in writing from this approach. In doing so, Lorde began to observe the changing of the seasons, and compared this to the cycle of life and death. Initially conceived as an acid record, the singer decided to use cannabis to write material after a negative experience with the drug.