LORDE IS BORN AGAIN WITH ‘VIRGIN’
Lorde released her fourth album, Virgin, nearly four years after her last album, Solar Power, released to mixed reactions. While Solar Power was a solid album about Lorde’s experiences with fame and getting older, fans expected an album more akin to her electric break up album, Melodrama, and were disappointed when the album didn’t live up to those standards.
When Virgin was announced, some fans did a reappraisal of Solar Power and felt that the backlash against it was overblown and unwarranted, while others hoped that the album would be a return to the sound that made melodrama such a cultural staple. Virgin takes the best parts of both albums and combines them to create something truly special.
The first single Lorde released off of Virgin, “What Was That?”, was an instant success. Fans could hear traces of the synth heavy sound they loved in songs like “Green Light” and “Supercut,” coming from a more mature version of Lorde. While not the best song on the album by far, it’s the perfect taste of what the album has in store without alienating any potential listeners, making it the best choice to put out as a single. This is in stark contrast to the second single, “Man of the Year,” which works much better in the context of the album. The lyric “Who’s gon’ love me like this?” in a song about how she’s becoming a new version of herself that suits her better than the person she used to be hits a lot harder when listened to directly after “Shapeshifter,” a song about how she tends to change herself in order to be liked.
The final single before the album was released is also the first song on the album. “Hammer” is a song that introduces the listener to the theme of the album, which is rebirth. The lyrics reveal a version of Lorde that is starting to come to terms with the fact that she needs to make a change but doesn’t know exactly how to do it. She’s able to identify her bad habits while also admitting that she can’t break them yet. It’s a very vulnerable song that marks the start of her healing journey.
Lorde’s journey with healing and self-discovery is a long and messy one that created some of the best songs on the album. “Favorite Daughter” is a song about a fairly universal experience of doing everything you can for your parents’ approval, but it also connects to her struggles with identity. In “Shapeshifter,” she admitted that she is willing to become anything for love, and “Favorite Daughter” gives that behavior a truly sad origin. One of the most interesting musical choices in Virgin is the robotic effect added to Lorde’s voice in “Clearblue,” a song about the very human experience of romanticizing and re-evaluating the meaning of a sexual encounter while taking a pregnancy test. Similarly, “Broken Glass” has a heavy electronic beat that might remind fans of Melodrama, but the lyrics are a heartbreaking account of Lorde’s struggle with an eating disorder and the difficulties of getting to a place where she truly wants to recover.
Despite the struggles and the uncertainty, the end of Lorde’s journey is still a hopeful one. In “If She Could See Me Now,” Lorde is someone who can recognize the progress she’s made and even celebrate it. In “David,” the final song on the album, Lorde sings about a past relationship that was unhealthy for her—something we hear about a lot on the album—and how she is finally able to truly let go. In the outro, she asks, “Am I ever gon’ love again?” The album leads the listener to believe she will.
Virgin may not be Lorde’s best album (that title still belongs to Melodrama), but it is the album she needed to make and that fans needed to hear. With Virgin, Lorde tells the audience that it is okay to know that you need to heal but not know what that healing looks like until you’re actively healing. It’s a very powerful message and it makes for a really good album.