Now That Lorde’s Back, Can ‘South Park’s Randy Marsh Handle Another Storyline?

The beloved pop star Lorde has finally returned to releasing new music more than four years after we last heard her sing, “I am Lorde, yayaya,” but how does she have time to make another album when she’s busy being Karen and Elon Musk as well?

Yesterday afternoon, the world of pop music went into a frenzy when the sensitive singer-songwriter and former Colorado geologist, released a 15-second snippet of a new song on TikTok, indicating that, more than four years after the release of her most recent hit album Solar Power, a fresh Lorde album may be on the horizon. Fans of the “Royals” singer and father of two have endured an excruciating wait for more Lorde, but, given the artist’s many side hustles over the last four years, it’s understandable that Lorde hasn’t had much time for her music career, what with the constant demands of Tegridy Farms taking up all of her screen time.

With the long-awaited 27th season of South Park finally premiering this July 9th, followers of the series must be wondering how Trey Parker and Matt Stone will handle a possible Lorde release coinciding with the show’s return. Given that Season 27 will only have a measly six episodes, how is Randy Marsh supposed to write a new album and be the de facto protagonist South Park now that the show’s creators have picked their favorite character?

Every South Park fan will remember how, during the real Lorde’s ascendency to stardom in 2014, Parker and Stone decided to add the singer to the South Park canon by making her the artistic alter ego of Randy Marsh, who uses sound engineering software and extremely convincing costuming to make himself appear to be a sensitive New Zealand teenager with a knack for pop melodies. Randy’s Lorde made her debut in the Season 18 episode “Gluten Free Ebloa,” a storyline that marked the beginning of the most enduring running joke of Lorde’s career — and the start of South Park’s incessant Randy-fixation.

As Parker and Stone have gotten older and raised their own families, the pair have made no secret of the fact that, in these later South Park seasons, they see more of themselves in Randy than they do in the boys who were originally the main characters of the series. As such, recent seasonal storylines have somewhat sidelined Stan, Kyle and Kenny while Randy (and, of course, the fan-favorite Cartman) continue to soak up the spotlight.

As the recent teaser for Season 27 suggests, Randy-mania will continue into 2025, as his fresh obsession with ketamine and desire to “fuck around with the government a little” indicate that Parker and Stone intend to use him as an Elon Musk stand-in to satirize the K-snorting commander in chief of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. With so many plates to keep spinning and so few South Park episodes on the schedule, don’t be surprised when, in Season 27, Lorde puts her music on the backburner to focus on her fascism career.