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Lorde’s album “Virgin” discusses her vulnerabilities, meditating on fame, identity, body image and lost love in songs like “Favourite Daughter,” “David” and ”Broken Glass.”
Ella Yelich O’Connor, known professionally as Lorde, released her long-awaited fourth studio album, “Virgin,” on June 27. Although Lorde is known for her introspective lyrics and synth-pop production, “Virgin” dives deeper into her vulnerabilities. She tackles her struggles with her gender identity, eating disorder and complex family dynamics, concluding that she does not have all the answers.
The record is a departure from her last studio album, “Solar Power,” in which Lorde explored a more lively folk sound and lyrics filled with pop culture references.
Lorde’s opener, “Hammer,” sets the tone for the album. When announcing the single, she described the song as “an ode to city life.”
“Some days, I’m a woman, some days, I’m a man,” she sings, adding, “I might have been born again / I’m ready to feel like I don’t have thе answers / There’s pеace in the madness over our heads.” These lyrics hint at the theme of gender identity, explored throughout the rest of “Virgin,” introducing the idea of rebirth and finding contentment in chaos.
Throughout “Solar Power,” Lorde reflected on and celebrated her seclusion from celebrity life. Now, in “Hammer,” Lorde acknowledges and appreciates what public perception can offer her.
Her song “Favourite Daughter” tackles both her relationship with her mother and her experience with fame at an early age. The song explores what it means to be “perfect” in the eyes of her family and the public view. Lorde wrote her number one hit, “Royals,” when she was only 15, and received two Grammys for the song at the age of 17.
“Cause I’m an actress, all of the medals I won for ya / Breaking my back just to be your favourite daughter / Everywhere I run, I’m always runnin’ to ya / Breaking my back just hoping you’ll say I’m a star,” repeats the chorus. Lorde explains how experiencing fame and success at an early age left her feeling like an “actress.”
The production of “Broken Glass” is reminiscent of some of Lorde’s early hits, though the lyrics are personal, as the song discusses Lorde’s struggle with her body image.
Lorde first brought her negative physical perception of herself to the public’s attention with her feature on Charli XCX’s “Girl, So Confusing,” singing, “I’ve been at war in my body.” She dives deeper into these struggles throughout the song.
“I wanna punch the mirror / To make her see that this won’t last / It might be months of bad luck / But what if it’s just broken glass?” she sings.
“Broken Glass” was the most challenging song for Lorde to write and release.
“I finished writing it like two weeks before we handed in the album. We were working on it for years, it was so stuck in me and I was like let it out, let it out,” she told Jake Shane on his podcast, “Therapuss.”
Lorde concludes the album with “David,” a track about her relationship with her ex. The title references both the biblical character and the statue; Lorde describes feeling like David compared to her ex, the “Goliath,” due to their 17-year age gap.
“There’s a lot of strength to this album and I always felt that the end needed to be a real breakdown of that,” she said in an interview with Zane Lowe.
As the song concludes, Lorde’s vocals begin to glitch as she sings, “But I don’t belong to anyone.” The music swells before stripping back as Lorde repeats the question, “Am I ever gon’ love again?”
The question remains unanswered as she ends by singing, “Tell it to ‘em.”
Lorde’s “Virgin” is both a return to the vocals and production that made her so successful in her teen years and a reflection on her “rebirth” in her late 20s.
“I was thinking a lot about Michelangelo’s ‘David’ writing this album,” she said in an interview with BBC Radio. “When he was asked how he did it, he said, ‘I just carved away all that was not David,’ so I thought … ‘Just carve away anything that isn’t you.’”