LORDE’S VIRGIN: THE ALBUM THAT FINALLY STOPS PRETENDING

Published on VMagazine
Words by Evan Skovronsky
Graphic by Aubrey Lauer
View piece here 


For a decade, Lorde has been circling the idea of sincerity. First, as a precocious teen dissecting the culture at large (Pure Heroine), then as a messy city girl (Melodrama), and later, as a beachside philosopher (Solar Power). But Virgin is the moment she finally drops the sun salutations and stares the ugly parts of life in the face.

No more wellness escapism. No more coyness. Just the body, the psyche, the impossible urge to belong.

From its first seconds, Virgin is messy in a way Lorde has never dared. “Clearblue,” a song about a pregnancy scare, begins with her whispering the name of the test brand like it’s an incantation. It’s not a hook; it’s a confession. The production, courtesy of Jim-E Stack, is sparse but tactile. Synths that sound like they’re made from bruised skin, percussion that limps rather than marches.

Lyrically, she’s stopped speaking in riddles. This is a record of particulars: her cellphone fluidity, the text she didn’t send. On “Hammer,” she slides between gendered signifiers,“Some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man,” and the line doesn’t feel performative. It sounds tired. Honest. Current Affairs is the older, wiser sister to The Louvre. The summer fling explored in The Louvre comes to a messy close, showing that summer flings will likely end in heartbreak. It’s a new take but the seeds were there from the beginning, a feeling of mistrust. 

Where Melodrama was a hurricane, Virgin is the aftermath. You feel her sitting on the floor, counting the cost of all her past selves. The title is, of course, both literal and not, a nod to the ways purity and shame still haunt even the most progressive of us. 

Even when she aims for something like pop catharsis, she refuses to give you an easy way out. “Man of the Year,” one of the record’s singles, pairs a serrated synth line with the story of a New York party hookup that dissolved into self-loathing. The chorus isn’t triumphant, it’s more like a shrug. If Melodrama was the sound of dancing through heartbreak, Virgin is the sound of lying still and naming it.

Production-wise, this is her most experimental album since her debut. Gone is Jack Antonoff’s maximalist polish. In its place: a tense minimalism that recalls the blunt edges of early Fiona Apple. There are no anthems here, only mood. Even when the music swells, it never fully resolves. It just hovers, uncomfortable, daring you to admit you feel it too.

Virgin will likely polarize listeners the way Solar Power did, but for the opposite reason (I adore them both). Where that record was too “surface”, this one is borderline confrontational. If you come here looking for the melodic perfection of Melodrama or the cultural commentary of Pure Heroine, you’ll leave unsatisfied.

But if you’re ready to meet an artist who has finally stopped trying to curate herself, who’s willing to be humiliatingly human, Virgin is nothing short of a revelation.

This isn’t Lorde’s redemption arc. It’s her surrender. And for the first time, she sounds free.