Album Review: Virgin by Lorde

Virgin, Lorde's fourth album, recalls the halcyon days of 2017's Melodrama but consciously drains the blood from its predecessor once-removed's lushness. Here, Lorde pares back the starkness of her lyricism even further, punctuating with biting introspection and playful audacity; questioning biology or romance on Hammer ('Don't know if it's love or if it's ovulation'), embracing sparse but wan vulnerability on Clearblue, or prompting a double-take with 'you tasted my underwear' on the sonically warmer standout Current Affairs. The production is deliberately anaemic, with certain compositions unanchored and sparse until midway through; this is exemplified by Shapeshifter, whose arrival of strings in the second verse finally grounds it.

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Lorde has always been in control of the narrative ("Give them nothing personal / So I'm not affected," she reflects on "Shapeshifter," a spiritual successor to Taylor Swift's "mirrorball"); she's never been this uncomfortably honest before. Following the return to nature of 2021's Solar Power, her fourth studio album sees the pop star casting aside a fear of being cringe -- which makes the current backlash she's facing over some interview comments, including admitting to have watched Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's sex tape in its entirety, which she refers to on "Current Affairs," especially ironic -- in the pursuit of full transparency. A very literal translation of this modus operandi appears in Virgin's artwork, an x-ray of her pelvis: an inherent promise to strip herself down to the bone, no matter the ways in which the osseous matter might jut out in skeletal grotesqueness.

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Her fourth album celebrates the messiness of being human - and is also her most compelling and revealing It only seems like yesterday that Ella Yelich-O’Connor (or Lorde, as everyone knows her now) appeared with Pure Heroine, a startlingly languid debut album that dreamed of Cristal and Maybachs, referenced Broken Social Scene song titles and sang of teenage alienation. That debut album though is nearly 12 years old now, and since then Lorde has released Melodrama (which still stands as one of the best albums of the decade) and the rather less lauded Solar Power. The latter was a strange album, seemingly the work of someone who’s checked out from fame in favour of getting stoned on an idyllic beach.

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"Girl, so confusing" was everything a pop fan wanted from two great stars who had been pitted against each other: a naked call-and-response that divulged the manufactured rivalries embedded in every female singer's narrative. Undeniably, Lorde sounds marvelous on A. G. Cook's spasmic explosives, but electronic panache - judging from the singles thus far - doesn't serve her new songs about internal crises with no resolved future in foresight well enough.

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There's something telling about Lorde's state of mind on 'Hammer', which breaks open the world of 'Virgin'. "I might have been born again / I’m ready to feel like I don’t have thе answers," she sings between industrial slices of icy synths. Always presented as wise beyond her years, it doesn't feel like Ella Yelich-O’Connor ever had the opportunity to mine the arrogance of youth and naivety, despite being just 17 when her debut was unleashed.

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Even though she's dropped an album every four years, Lorde's career has felt so start-stop that it's surprising to realize we’ve had a dozen trips around the sun since "Royals" lofted her, at the age of just 16, to Grammy-winning, global stardom in a matter of months. She drops an album, tours, and then basically hides in plain sight until she's ready to do it again. That's not a criticism — props to her for handling fame so fully on her own terms, despite the anxieties she's spoken of in her musical collaboration/ therapy session with Charli xcx on "Girl, So Confusing," and the robust publicity and social-media campaign leading up to this latest, much louder chapter in her career.

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Following a four year hiatus, garnering palpable anticipation for her return, Lorde sheds the tanned skin of her 'Solar Power' era and embraces her rebirth of musical expression, grappling with her self-identity on her fourth album 'Virgin '. Initially 'Virgin's' unsubtle, one word title strikes out in a similar suggestively-didactic sense as Madonna's 1992 album 'Erotica', proving equally as alike with it's blue and white cover art. But whilst Madonna sought to subvert the ’90s archaic taboos surrounding female pleasure, Lorde's 'Virgin' serves as a personal renaissance as the album's eleven tracks see her set out to reclaim her identity in a rawly honest lyrical unravelling of generational trauma; battling with body dysmorphia, embracing existence outside of gendered binaries, and dealing with the despair of living with romantic heartbreak, calling back to teenage naivety in her most vulnerable moments.

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When Lorde emerged in 2013 with her global hit "Royals," there was much about her musical talents that belied her 16 years. One thing that didn't was her sense of certainty in her critiques of the elites and the way we idolize them. Her debut album, Pure Heroine, was similarly filled with songs that exuded a fundamentally teenage assuredness about what's right and wrong in mass culture.

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