{"id":17731,"date":"2025-06-27T01:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T01:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/17731\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T01:01:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T01:01:08","slug":"lorde-is-brilliantly-reborn-on-virgin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/17731\/","title":{"rendered":"Lorde Is Brilliantly Reborn on \u2018Virgin\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDays before Lorde<\/a> released her fourth album, Virgin<\/a>, the pop superstar stood in the middle of Brooklyn club Baby\u2019s All Right<\/a> basked under a cerulean-blue glow as she shared song snippets from her new project and danced with fans<\/a>. Dressed in a white, nearly see-through dress with glitter on her face, Lorde<\/a> threw her hands up toward the venue\u2019s disco ball and looked like an ethereal reincarnation of herself. With Virgin, Lorde excavates parts of herself she has yet to contend with on the public stage \u2014 from her evolving gender identity<\/a> to her family-born traumas. The result is nearly 40 minutes of undeniable pop bangers and jagged synth flashes where Lorde wipes parts of her past clean and makes room for the adult she has crystallized into.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a departure for the musician who has chosen to retreat out of the spotlight after each album cycle, an act that has created a somewhat purposeful, somewhat accidental pattern of waiting four years between releases. The last time we heard from Lorde, on 2021\u2019s laid-back, folk-toned Solar Power<\/a>, she\u2019d chucked her cellphone into the waters of her native New Zealand and naively swore she was a girl who had seen it all. That album wasn\u2019t as impactful (perhaps by design) as her first two commercially successful and critically-acclaimed LPs, 2013\u2019s Pure Heroine<\/a> and 2017\u2019s Melodrama<\/a>. Since then, fans have clamored for Lorde to return to the swooping, alternative synth-pop that defined her early career, which means the stakes are particularly high for Virgin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe has answered the call with an album that isn\u2019t trying to capture something from the past, but instead leans into the chaos of reinvention. It\u2019s the sound of an artist \u2014 one who recently came out of her longest relationship \u2014 learning to be OK with the uncertainty of solitude. \u201cI might have been born again, I\u2019m ready to feel like I don\u2019t have the answers,\u201d she sings on the mystically swirling opening track, \u201cHammer.\u201d She\u2019s finally owning up to the fact that, despite her claims to the contrary on Solar Power, she\u2019s never had it figured out. Having arrived at that awareness, she taps into a whole new kind of emotional upheaval that goes well beyond even the most intense moments on Melodrama<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\n\tMuch like its album cover, which features a cloudy blue X-ray image of Lorde\u2019s own pelvis (including her IUD), Virgin is a raw portrait of not only Lorde the artist, but also Ella Yelich O\u2019Connor, the 28 year-old woman behind the mic. Throughout her discography, Lorde has made references to her mother \u2014 on Melodrama\u2019s\u00a0 \u201cWriter in the Dark\u201d and Solar Power\u2019s \u201cOceanic Feeling.\u201d But on Virgin, she goes bone-deep and tackles her generational trauma across several tracks. On the supercharged album highlight \u201cFavourite Daughter,\u201d she owns up to her people-pleasing tendencies and ties the compulsion back to her own mother-daughter relationship. \u201cCause I\u2019m an actress, all of the medals I won for ya\/Panic attack just to be your favorite daughter,\u201d the singer confesses over a clapping beat and pirouetting melody that lifts higher and higher with each note.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the jolting \u201cGRWM,\u201d which unexpectedly means \u201cgrown woman\u201d rather than the popular online acronym for \u201cget ready with me,\u201d Lorde carries her \u201cmama\u2019s trauma\u201d in her wide hips and finally realizes just who she wants to be: \u201cA grown woman in a baby tee.\u201d The twinkling Wurlitzer echoes Solar Power\u2019s \u201cSecrets from a Girl,\u201d but gone is any girlish bravado. Even on a song about a new fling, like \u201cCurrent Affairs,\u201d Lorde turns to her mother as a map for how to be a brave woman in a messy relationship.<\/p>\n

\n\tVirgin\u2019s rawest moment is \u201cClearblue,\u201d<\/a> a song appropriately named after the popular drugstore pregnancy test, as Lorde contends with both unprotected sex and the daunting reality of holding her family\u2019s trauma deep in her DNA. The track is fittingly visceral, with Lorde\u2019s voice layered, warped, and distorted to jarring effect, making for the kind of musical catharsis that\u2019s designed to double you over on the first listen. \u201cThere\u2019s broken blood in me, it passed to my mother from her mother down to me,\u201d Lorde sings without any backing instrumentation, suspending us in the stillness of her honesty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tFrom Melodrama\u2019s \u201cWriter in the Dark\u201d to Pure Heroine\u2019s \u201cStill Sane,\u201d identity has always been a common theme in Lorde\u2019s music. But like everything else on Virgin, the explorations here are much more vulnerable than what she\u2019s previously offered. She broadens the scope of her gender on the climactic \u201cMan of the Year\u201d\u00a0<\/a>and reflects on all the different partners she embodies in romantic relationships with \u201cShapeshifter,\u201d admitting on the dreamy track, \u201cI\u2019ve been the prize, the ball and chain.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the sound of its thumping bass and electro-pop synths, \u201cBroken Glass\u201d could turn into a big anthem in the vein of \u201cGreen Light\u201d \u2014 in fact, it chronicles Lorde\u2019s struggles with an eating disorder<\/a>. Against the song\u2019s bombastic production, Lorde details the ghastly side of starvation, including rotten teeth and shattered mirrors. \u201cI hate to admit just how much I paid for it,\u201d she confesses in the first verse. The song\u2019s sonic direction is an interesting choice for Lorde, who often opts for intimate acoustic instrumentation when getting at especially tough subjects, as on 2017\u2019s \u201cLiability.\u201d But no matter the depths Virgin explores lyrically, the propulsive rhythms and uplifting synths could easily get play time in a moody club. It\u2019s one of several high points here that might bring to mind the mirrorball vulnerability of\u00a0\u201cDancing on My Own,\u201d by one-time Lorde collaborator Robyn.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn some ways, the album sees Lorde return to the steely, electronic world of dance-forward synth-pop she explored on Melodrama, but the production on Virgin is much more sparse than her sophomore effort. There\u2019s no party to emulate here (either to enjoy or escape from), it\u2019s just Lorde\u2019s signature lower register delivering truth bombs, one after another.<\/p>\n

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\n\tWhen Lorde isn\u2019t writing about tough topics like family dynamics or her body image, she is revealing in other ways, offering elemental, carnal songs about love and desire. On \u201cCurrent Affairs,\u201d she <\/strong>builds upon the suggestive imagery of being naked in bed from previous songs like Melodrama\u2019s\u00a0 \u201cThe Louvre\u201d <\/strong>with something much more straightforward. \u201cYou spit in my mouth like you\u2019re saying a prayer,\u201d Lorde sings, her angelic voice making the act sound holy. Amid the ragged candor of \u201cClearblue,\u201d the singer paints a vivid image: \u201cMy hips moving faster, I rode you until I cried,\u201d she offers, almost wailing as her voice breaks.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the end of Virgin, Lorde is confident that she is embodying a newfound strength. She lifts her exes\u2019 body weight at the gym on the convulsive \u201cIf She Could See Me Now,\u201d and delivers sharp incisive lines directly to said ex on the cinematic closing track, \u201cDavid.\u201d After all the excavation and ecstasy, Lorde becomes unleashed and fully free \u2014 one step closer to the person she wants to be.<\/p>\n