Lorde: Virgin

Here's the thing about Virgin: it hits different. Not in the uber calculated way where pop stars pretend to be vulnerable for TikTok moments, but in that rare, slightly uncomfortable way where you feel like you've stumbled into someone's actual therapy session and they're too busy having breakthroughs to kick you out, for better or worse. 

(Album Cover)

Lorde's fourth album, her first since 2021 tepidly received Solar Power, is essentially her saying, "remember when I was the cool teenager who had everything figured out? Yeah, about that...". The X-ray pelvis cover art, complete with a visible IUD, isn't just shock value, it's perhaps one of the most honest album artworks this decade. This is Lorde at 28, post-breakup from her former label exec, post-birth control, post-pretending that growing up famous doesn't mess with your head in spectacular ways.

Lead single What Was That kicks things off like someone hitting the reset button on your nervous system. It's got that immediate, jittery energy of realising you've been sleepwalking through your own life. The production on the record, courtesy of Jim-E Stack and Lorde herself, understands that sometimes synths need to sound like they're having panic attacks in a way that feels like Melodrama's scrappier, slightly unhinged cousin.

But it's Man of the Year where things get interesting. Lorde is seen quite literally taping down her chest in the video, exploring themes of gender and fluidity with the same matter-of-fact boldness she once reserved for critiquing the culture of wealth in the 2010s. Some days I'm a woman, some days I'm a man, she sings on opener Hammer, and suddenly the album title makes perfect sense. Virgin isn't about sexual purity; it's about rebirth, starting fresh, admitting you don't have the answers.

Shapeshifter might be her best song since Melodrama, a pulsing meditation on how we contort ourselves for love, delivered over production that sounds like it's breathing. Meanwhile, Broken Glass tackles eating disorders with the kind of unflinching honesty that would make most pop stars' publicists faint. I wanna punch the mirror, but I see this won't last, she sings, and somehow makes body dysmorphia sound like a dance anthem.

The album stumbles slightly in its back half— GRWM feels like it's trying too hard to be profound, and Clearblue meanders when it should soar. But these are for nought as the record ends on its highest high with closer David, an achingly beautiful ode to her pain and past self while cementing her reincarnation. 

Virgin isn't Lorde's best album (that's still the legendary Melodrama), but it might be her most necessary. It's the sound of someone finally permitting themselves to not have it all figured out—and discovering that confusion can be its own kind of clarity.

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By Anish Paranjape

The Entertainment Department