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When Lorde worked it out on the remix with Charli XCX last year, she gobsmacked us all by sharing a big, raw confession. “For the last couple years / I’ve been at war in my body,” she shared frankly on her first new music since her 2021 album ‘Solar Power’ – a record which couldn’t prepare us for her ‘Girl, so confusing’ verse. Clearly, that collaboration unlocked something primal within the Kiwi singer and her new album ‘Virgin’ picks up from that same place, exposing the most personal side we’ve seen of Lorde yet.
Off the contraceptive pill and in touch with her most animalistic emotions, ‘Virgin’ shows just how much of a battle it was for Lorde to become embodied. On ‘Broken Glass’, she details her struggles to break free from her eating disorder. Lamenting rotted teeth and lost libido caused by the disorder, she crafts one of her most triumphant choruses as she challenges herself to punch the mirror: “It might be years of bad luck / But what if it’s just broken glass?”
Her journey with gender fills the liberating ‘Man Of The Year’. Inspired by attending the GQ ceremony of the same name, Lorde embraces a more masculine alter ego here, unafraid to “swish mouthwash” and “jerk off”. For a pop star, the tinny crash cymbals and gravelly synths are admirably unpolished, and it sounds like Lorde chipping away at her own sculpture in real time. On the startlingly abrasive ‘If She Could Only See Me Now’, she takes a new form – her most muscular and braggadocious: “I’m a mystic / I swim in waters / That would drown so many other bitches”.
We also get a rare glimpse into her relationship with her mother on ‘Favourite Daughter’. Over a rollicking beat, Lorde describes “breaking my back” and suffering “panic attack[s]” to be the golden child – but ultimately, to be as “brave as my mother”. The song feels like it’s responding to the more ancient definition of a virgin – one where virginity was defined not by sexual inexperience, but independence.
Sonically, Lorde also takes some big swings without losing sight of who she is on ‘Virgin’. The icy ‘Shapeshifter’ is an ode to the creaking future garage of Burial, while ‘Clearblue’ is a stunning Autotuned, a capella cut that feels like her take on Imogen Heap’s ‘Hide And Seek’. Here, Lorde stands firmly in the flurry of emotions while taking a pregnancy test; with her guttural cries in the background, it makes for one of the most breathtaking moments on the record.
There are moments where the production feels slightly misjudged. ‘What Was That’ has all the tension of ‘Melodrama’ without any of the payoff, while ‘Current Affairs’ includes some of the most baffling choices on the record. To save its utterly bland instrumentation, ‘Current Affairs’ includes a warped dancehall sample from Daseca and Dexta Daps, and then chucks in a spoken word call-and-response in the vein of ‘This Mess We’re In’. It’s a head-scratching decision from an album that, for the most part, successfully balances exploration with cohesion.
But ultimately, ‘Virgin’ is a vibrant combination of Lorde’s best qualities, and then some. With her newfound candour, the record combines the emotional whirlwind of ‘Melodrama’, the chilling minimalism of ‘Pure Heroine’ and the breezy freedom of ‘Solar Power’. This might be called ‘Virgin’, but Lorde proves she’s not afraid to strip herself bare.
Details
- Record label: Universal Music New Zealand
- Release date: June 27, 2025
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