lorde, what was that?
the new lorde album has it all: an interpolation of suga how you get so high by baby bash, a grown woman in a baby tee and references to the pamela anderson and tomy lee sex tape that we probably wouldn't even understand if she hadn't kept talking about the album in full, uncomfortable detail before it even came out.
lorde has always been messy and unpredictable. it's one of her, dare i say, gifts as an artist. however, all the press tours and the promotion leading up to her new record, virgin, has really showed us how sometimes, that can be to her detriment big time, once again.
before the record came out, lorde gave some interviews and visited some podcasts, saying some crazy shit about the album. i mean truly crazy. even for lorde standards. i'm sure all the discourse created great publicity and hype for the album, but come on. the most disturbing part of the "crazy behavior" was probably her super romanticized statements on the pamela anderson sex tape which, rightfully so, generated backlash. but there were others! a specific one that pissed me off in particular where she was talking about how getting off birth control and getting her period for the first time in a long time was "psychedelic". now, i'm not really a birth control freak who thinks the drug is awesome for your body and even mental health to be on it constantly. i suffer from pcos and i find myself often thinking, "i just wish there was an alternative to whatever this is!" my issue is mainly with this new trend of romanticizing the period. i'm personally pretty weirded out by treating the cycle like some divine force, a sine quo non of femininity and womanhood. this idea that, having your period and going through your menstrual cycle gives you this inspiration, freedom and empowerment, unlocks your sexuality, "the divine feminine" and so on. i don't know how to put this but a menstrual cycle is in fact not like turning into a werewolf every full moon. it's not a supernatural phenomenon. having hormonal fluctuations affects you for sure, but it isn't like being possessed by some divine being where you lose control over your senses. what is this the medieval era? i don't think it's healthy to turn your menstrual cycle into a personality trait folks. so you could say i was rolling my eyes really hard when the album kicked off with the lines, "there's a heat in the pavement, my mercury's raising, don't know if it's love or if it's ovulation". and trust me i wouldn't be rolling them so hard if i wasn't subjected to this interview beforehand. so all that i'm saying is, let the music speak for itself. because when we do that, when we come up with some incredible songwriting, raw, vulnerable and sometimes even indefinite, we get songs like "favourite daughter" which made me sob uncontrollably as someone with severe mommy issues. or "shapeshifter" which feels bigger than a song. my favorite lorde is the lorde that makes you ponder and keeps you come back again and again to a song, just to experience the feeling that she literally violently reached down your throat and grabbed to get it out of you, once again. leaving you sitting there thinking, "what the hell just happened to me?", "broken glass" is another song on the record that accomplishes that.
i liked virgin. i liked the new productional route it took, i love the industrial yet minimal sonic atmosphere, i can even appreciate how it feels incomplete and monotone sometimes. it's also 2025. so i've made peace with the fact that lorde is the type of artist that talks about how drugs changed her life and revolutionized her sense of self (which she literally does on this record). with every rollout we have a new lorde who says, "i'm completely different now, i'm a brand new person". it gets old at some point and you just want to shrug like you would to a teenager. but lorde isn't a capricious teenager, lorde is lorde. so, when you dare to think "wow that's immature", she's way ahead of you in this record. "it's just a phase", she says. "i'm looking for a grown woman" she says. i think that's one of the fortes of virgin. not only is it raw and emotional like all lorde records, we see lorde acknowledging her emotional immaturity and her exaggerated view of herself at times. "i've been up on the pedestal, but tonight just wanna fall." battling with the god or prodigy or whatever you want to call it, complex is what makes lorde and her career path unique and even relatable. i think we all got some of that within, to varying degrees. again, i just wish she'd keep the aura of mystery surrounding the record before the release!
overall, with its short length and some undercooked songs, virgin isn't my album of the year, nor is it my favorite lorde effort, but it's different and definitely a step forward to new and exciting developments.