Lorde Surrenders To Rawness On ‘Virgin’: “Compassion Is The Answer”

TW - ED: This article contains discussions of disordered eating and body image. If this article brings up distressing themes for you, there are resources linked at the end of this article. If you would like to read this article but would prefer to avoid this content, there is a guide at the end of this article that signposts where the beginning and end of this content is placed.

When lauded by David Bowie as “the future of music”, it’s hard to imagine a fellow human and instead a god-like magnitude of artistic brilliance, too bright to behold with the naked eye. And yet, no solar glasses necessary, Lorde greets me brimming with warmth and casualness like that of an old friend.

As of tomorrow, 28-year-old Ella Yelich-O'Connor, in the limelight as Lorde, will release her newest body of work, Virgin, chronicling a time of resounding, raw renewal.

“A big part of this album for me,” she says, “and part of why I call it Virgin, is because I really had this sort of feeling of rebirth at some point in 2023. I changed a lot about my life, and I took away a lot of the structures that I had relied upon to be like, “This is my life and I know what I'm doing."

“My vibe for a long time had been: I got this. I think a lot about this album is choosing to not know where it’s going to go, and let it happen to you.”

The first track off Virgin, titled Hammer, immediately pulls back the veil from life’s pervasive illusion of control, building to a lyric which sets the stage:

“I ready to feel like I don’t have the answers.”

It’s as if the album begins with an exhale. The simultaneous weight to her words and the weightlessness they exude are painted amidst a crunchy explosion of teethy beats and synths, kickstarting the record. While far from Lorde’s trademark masterclass of sonic minimalism, still sown across the album, these cataclysmic builds and ricocheting layers already begin to signpost a brand new era.

While Lorde views Virgin as being “very adult” and the first album she’s “made as a ‘woman’ quote-unquote,” she also uncovered an echo of a younger Ella through this process of letting go, discovering a thread to her teen self.

“I was reconnected with this deep naivety and this sort of crudeness,” she recalls. “This lack of refinement and these big swings of emotions. Feeling really vulnerable and awkward. I came off my birth control and I had this, like… fucked up cystic acne. Like, truly as bad it could be. My skin hadn’t been that bad since I was a teenager, and it gave me no choice but to really be in the vulnerability of being alive.”

Embodying her own humanness became a quest for ultimate transparency on Virgin - to remove every obstacle of self-censorship possible and channel her truth with complete unrestraint. In doing so, she felt herself evolve as a creative conduit, allowing her art to flow through her purer than ever before.

“I actually see that now as a real mark of my artistic maturing,” Lorde affirms, “because I think that all the best artists I know have no idea what they’re going to make, or why they’re making what they make. There is this deep mystery to being an artist. You don’t really know why this stuff is coming out of you a lot of the time.”

“I think surrendering to that mystery has made me feel like I’m being a real artist.”

But after three albums hailed for their openness and introspection, what was the sign that made Lorde feel the need to search deeper? What were the hidden layers that remained untouched?

“Some time during my last album,” she flashes back, “I started to feel like I needed to be thin. Be very thin. And that would reveal something about me. There was like a version of me that was supposed to be born out of this discipline and this rigidity that comes from trying not to eat and trying to make yourself very small.”

From the moment she woke up to the moment she went to sleep, Lorde laments that so much of her energy went towards policing herself and her body. “I just hit a day,” she declares. “I remember being like - that’s enough. I am keeping my life very small, as I keep my body very small. There is no growth happening here, and it feels like I’m doing this full-time job.”

The extreme deprivation she intended to promote self-improvement instead self-sabotaged, not only dangerously starving her health, but her sense of self and creative lifeforce. She explains, “For me, letting go of this fear around what happened if I took up more space really changed everything.” 

Now trying to dedicate kindness and care back to her body, Lorde came to the realisation that flooding herself with an unrestrained abundance of self-love was the only way to let herself truly flourish.

“I thought of it as a compassion power wash when I would have these thoughts,” she describes. “It was like getting a power hose out, and it was just compassion, compassion, compassion… And I’d never tried that. I had tried everything else. I’d tried treating myself like shit. Saying you’re never good enough. And turns out… compassion is the answer.”

As her body grew stronger, she then realised another inner truth bubbling to the surface. “I sort of saw my shoulders getting bigger and my arms and my back… expanding,” she recounts, a growing excitement in her eyes.

“It was having this effect of bringing this masculinity that has always been a big part of me since I was a child. I have always been the kind of woman who has, like, a deep masculinity in her, and I think a lot of people have that experience. But as I chose to let myself grow and grow, I thought… But I’m scared to grow! I’m scared to be everything I’m meant to be.”

And yet, in this wrestling of truth and fear, Lorde’s unconditional self-compassion became the key. “It was a real journey and I feel very lucky now,” she assures. “I don’t not eat. And I don’t look at myself that way.”

Now embracing a mission to no longer confine herself, as Lorde also began to feel the borders of her identity bend and expand. 

Continuing to explore her relationship with her own masculinity on Virgin, she began writing the track Man Of The Year. On social media, when she released the track, she wrote, “An offering from really deep inside me. The song I’m proudest of on Virgin.” And it doesn’t take long scrolling through the comments under the music video to witness the poignancy the clip and track have sparked amongst her fans, connecting to this anthemic release in countless unique and deeply personal ways.

The setting for the clip itself is minimal, zooming in on Lorde, sitting alone in an empty room before taking off her t-shirt and binding her chest with duct tape.

“It was something I did in my house just to see what that would look like,” she says. “And it never evolved past that because I like that tape feels so impermanent, and I think acknowledging the impermanence… It’s such a long, sprawling journey - gender. Identity. And I would never be like - this is where I am and this is where I’ll stay. But I think that’s why it’s so important to me to be like - this is where I am right now.”

“But I am realising that it’s such a mirror - gender stuff. It’s a two-way expression. It’s like what you offer and what everyone else takes from that. But I know who I am at this moment, on this day, at this minute of life. I’m like, okay… I think I have an understanding of where it all sits for me.”

In a society hyperfixated on labels, especially for those in the public eye, the realms of gender can be terrifying to traverse with the world always watching, bearing little flexibility for change. Waiting for neatly wrapped answers. Waiting for lifetimes of nuanced experiences to be boiled down into a single, digestible word. But for anyone who decides to tug on that thread of gender, the unravelling is often never straightforward enough to be sewn into a mere phrase, or even language altogether at times.

However, Lorde acknowledges the importance of labels where they are able to empower and offer help: “If there was a pin I could put in my gender, maybe I would? But maybe I wouldn’t, too?” 

“It’s important too that I keep checking myself and keep listening to the right voices, and I do feel it is complicated as well,” she deliberates. “I am very conscious of not taking space up that isn’t mine to take, especially right now with the way that trans rights are being so… I don’t even have the words… horrifically policed. And the level of disrespect.” 

Leaning into fluidity, Lorde is content to let her identity freely grow, insisting it’s to our benefit to keep exploring the in-betweens if you have the privilege of safety to do so, especially acknowledging being amidst such a volatile global political landscape currently weaponising gender diversity and trans rights.

Through Lorde’s introspection on gender, she too has discovered a deeper resonance to her own femininity at the same time. “It’s funny,” she shakes her head, “in this period of coming into my gender in a fuller way, I also never felt like more of a woman. I feel like it’s actually connected me to my femininity and to my womanhood specifically in a way that I never was. And I think there really is this overlap.”

As an album lyricising “ovulation” in its first opening lines, it’s immediately clear that Virgin is set to be a visceral reverence of humanness. Drawing inspiration from various creatives, including visual artists, performance artists and film directors, Lorde channelled many artistic lenses on body, sexuality and gender through her own process.

“I looked to a lot of incredible artists like Lee Lozano and Barbara Hammer and Carolee Schneemann,” she lists in awe. “These incredibly strong, raw, kind of feral female voices. “And what I found there… You couldn’t extricate it from masculinity. There was such a bothness about it. In the way the tools were being wielded. I was like, ‘Okay, you can be a woman this way.’ Sarah Lucas, Tracy Eamon… there are so many women that I think about that I looked to making this album.”

In the vein of bold, daring female voices, another inspiration to the creation of Virgin was sparked when Charli XCX’s phenomenon of Brat took to the world’s centre stage.

“I think I wrote almost all the songs on this album when the Girl, So Confusing remix happened,” Lorde recalls, seeing the track as “such a gift” to be presented with a wide-open doorway of rugged honesty.

“Unbeknownst to me,” she admits, “Charli was also trying to find this language of very raw femininity and sort of threw down this opportunity for me to do the same. In using language in this really plain way and getting at these really vulnerable things, I felt this layer come away between me and the people who listen to my music and realised they can see me a little bit clearer.”

“This type of expression is deeply valuable, and I think we need it right now. It feels urgent to me to be this vulnerable.”

And vulnerable she was, as in approaching Virgin, Lorde had to confront one of the most ubiquitous yet viciously isolating inner monologues: “I used to be like…. There’s an amount I’ll reveal about myself. There are some things about myself I could never be honest about. Because if somebody sees them, they will decide I am unlovable, and they will leave me.

“I thought this is what you do. You keep something back. And then I realised, no… You can show someone everything. For someone, that will be beautiful and perfect. And I sort of have a degree of that with my fans.”

Lorde’s fans have never met her halfway. Every Lorde fan I know personally brims with passion at the mention of her music. They are all-in, unwavering arms spread to uplift her with every artistic leap she makes. The unconditionality there is beautiful, as it is rare, built off a steadfast authenticity, a genuine care, and a welcoming behind the curtain she has always extended to her fans.

“I feel really lucky to have this channel with them,” she beams, “and I want to be incredibly honest with them, come what may. I know it might feel uncomfortable, and it might be a lot, but I think we can handle it.” 

Her smile widens, “I think it will be cool.”

Virgin will be released via EMI Music Australia on Friday, 27 June, with pre-orders available here.

Trigger Content Guide:

Content that includes discussions of disordered eating and body image begins after the YouTube embed of the What Was That music video. It ends after the third paragraph before the Man of The Year music video embed, beginning with “Continuing to explore her relationship with her own masculinity…”

Resources:

For Australia:

The Butterfly Foundation - https://butterfly.org.au/ - Helpline 1800 33 4673

Reach Out - https://au.reachout.com/mental-health-issues/eating-disorders

International:

UK: Beat - https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/

USA: National Eating Disorders Association - https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/

Canada: National Eating Disorder Information Centre - https://nedic.ca/