Lorde’s new album sheds the dreamy quality of her last record for insightful musings on gender, relationships and mental illness
BY LARA IQBAL GILLING, IMAGE BY THISTLE BROWN
Gone is the heady glow of Solar Power, Lorde’s polarising previous album. That dreamy sound has been replaced by a gritty pop in Virgin, her fourth and shortest project yet. Still present are her signature aerated vocals and embodied lyrics, projecting vignettes into listeners’ minds. Her entire discography is as vivid as a film, and Virgin is no different.
Hammer, the album’s first track, is charged with urgent magic. Lorde sings: “I burn and I sing and I scheme and I dance”. As the listener, you crave doing all of the above to the thrusting beat.
The song is emblematic of a feeling present throughout the album – embracing the chaos of your twenties. “I’m ready to feel like I don’t have the answers. There’s peace in the madness over our heads.” It’s a clear evolution from the teenage self-conviction that runs through Pure Heroine.
This maturity feels grounded but invigorating, just like the accompanying music video filmed on Hampstead Heath and Parliament Hill.
Another Hammer lyric reads: “Some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man”. Lorde’s “expansion”, as she puts it, of her understanding of her own gender is peppered throughout the album. Although she doesn’t want to label herself, she told Rolling Stone that she feels “in the middle gender-wise”.
Man Of The Year most clearly illustrates this development. Lorde binds her chest with duct tape in its video, dancing to express the pain and euphoria of a journey with gender. The music is thoughtful and her voice is breathy. “My babe can’t believe I’ve become someone else, someone more like myself,” she sings. “Now I’m broken open.”
The theme of identity is linked to the album’s title, too. Virgin’s original meaning was “a man-woman or androgynous person” who “has the whole potential of the total original human being”, according to screenshots the singer shared on her Instagram story. Lorde is supposedly creating her own path, rewriting the scripts of how things are supposed to be.
What does feel unusual is the track Broken Glass. Lorde sings: “Lettin’ her treat me like that, I think that it’s love”. If you weren’t listening closely, you might think the song depicts a romantic relationship, but it’s actually about Lorde’s eating disorder. The lyrics are obscure enough to avoid cliché and “Won’t outrun her if you don’t hit back” gives the artist an agency which is often missing in these conversations. In a time of SkinnyTok and the epidemic that is before and after pictures, Lorde’s vague approach is refreshing.
This responsible approach characterises the album as a whole. Virgin feels like Melodrama’s older sister – a woman who’s lived through more and reflected accordingly. She roars in the final song, David: “I don’t belong to anyone.”
You can listen to Virgin now.
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