Virgin by Lorde // Album Review
Virgin is representative of a transformative chapter for Lorde's artistic evolution. With this album, she explores every facet of her identity with the most raw, unfiltered forms of introspection at the forefront. Themes of femininity, sexuality, body image, and identity are explored in a fully transparent and intimate way. Reemerging only once every four years with new music, Virgin feels like a culmination of every chapter in Lorde's life and artistic journey thus far. It's an album that is starkly different from each era that precedes it, yet still honors every version of herself in a way that feels like a retrospective as much as it is an embrace of the person she is still becoming.
She truly bares it all with this music in a way that does come off as if she was trying to also be intentionally divisive with how specific and abrasive so much of it is lyrically. It gives such a clear look into who she is, which is emphasized by the actual x-ray image of her body on the album cover. "I think coming more into my body, I came into an understanding of the grotesque nature of it and the glory and all these things," Lorde said in an interview with Rolling Stone. "It's right on the edge of gross. I often really tried to hit this kind of gnarliness or grossness." She is definitely going for the BRAT approach to her songwriting, in the way that she isn't necessarily focused on making much of these songs sound lyrically poetic in any way. While this direct, no-frills approach to writing isn't completely out of the norm for Lorde as a songwriter, on Virgin it is definitely amplified.
It is also by far the shortest album Lorde has released to this point as well, coming in at just over 30 minutes long. While it does feel very brief, I do think she said all that she needed to say within these 11 songs. With that short of a run-time can also come with the risk of some of these really evocative concepts presented not feeling fully expanded upon in places where they absolutely could have been. On first listen, I didn't immediately connect with every track or fully grasp what she was going for on certain songs, but the layers keep uncovering more with each listen. It's the kind of album that starts to feel more cohesive the more time spent with it, as well.
The most compelling aspect of this album's narrative is her exploration of gender and generational identity. While her personal experiences and own sense of self make her who she is, she was also inherently shaped by the experiences of the women in her family who have come before her too, specifically her mom. It is a really thought provoking and beautifully executed concept that runs through the entirety of Virgin. So much of this album feels like a love letter to all of the past versions of herself and her own lineage that defined who she is and who she is still becoming. The dissection of her own womanhood and femininity also comes out of these songs too, the way she describes the feeling of finally feeling like an adult and feeling comfortable in her own body for the first time is such an impactful central theme to this record that I connected to so deeply.
The song "GRWM" is one of the clearest examples of this. It feels like a tribute to all of the past versions of herself, the 15 year old that wrote Pure Heroine, the heartbroken young adult that wrote Melodrama, and the woman in her mid-20's that felt like she had it all figured out but really didn't on Solar Power. So much of Virgin is a culmination of all of those themes and the way she was able to come out on the other side of it. She now sings from the perspective of someone in her late 20's that finally now feels like she has come into her own and feels like a grown woman - even if not in the traditional sense, just in the way that feels like the most evolved and matured version of herself. "Maybe you'll finally know who you wanna be, a grown woman in a baby tee," she sings. "Wide hips, soft lips, my mama's trauma, since '96, been looking for a grown woman".
Lorde worked with producer Jim-E Stack for the first time on Virgin and their artistic chemistry really shines through in every song. Some of the almost harsh, electronic production choices they made throughout Virgin is a stark contrast to much of the organic, laid-back style she embraced on her last record, Solar Power. Structurally, Virgin feels closer in ways to Melodrama, though it doesn't carry some of the same grandeur that defined her sophomore release.
Lorde introduced the new frame of mind and overall approach she would be taking with Virgin on "What Was That", her first solo single in nearly four years. Much in the same way that "Greenlight" was able to usher in a new creative era for her back in 2017, "What Was That" largely follows the same narrative as she finds herself in pursuit of personal freedom from anything - or anyone - that was holding her back. Writing in flashbacks, she sings about waking up from a dream state that she has been trapped in for years, following the breakup of a long-term relationship that shaped so much of who she was since she was a teenager. The feeling of losing a part of herself, or even mourning the last of her youth, is also really pertinent in the song as well. "I didn't know then that you'd never be enough for me, since I was seventeen, I gave you everything, now we wake from a dream, well baby, what was that?" she sings in the chorus. Alongside the song's release, Lorde wrote on her website; "Late 2023. Back in New York. Deep breakup. Stopping birth control. Every meal a battle. Flashbacks and waves. Feeling grief's vortex and letting it take me. Opening my mouth and recording what fell out." She finished by calling it, "The sound of my rebirth."
Throughout the song, she vividly recalls very specific moments throughout their relationship and the grief she finds herself going through in it's aftermath. From losing herself in the blue light of Baby's All Right in Brooklyn, doing MDMA in the back garden, and wearing smoke like a wedding veil from the best cigarette of her life, the song is so descriptive and lets the listener in on exactly what she's going through and the emotional toll this is taking on her. "I try to let whatever has to pass through me, pass through, but this is staying a while, I know it might not let me go," she sings. "What Was That" was such a raw and vulnerable introduction into what was to come for the rest of Virgin and the time of her life that inspired so much of this music.
Virgin opens with "Hammer", which feels very similar to "What Was That" in it's melody and tone, as it expands on many of the themes that were first presented in the album's lead single. Produced by Jim-E Stack, the song pulses with a bold electronic dance energy that carries a sense of urgency, which beautifully mirrors Lorde's emotional reckoning and transformation. She once called it her "ode to city life and horniness".
"Don't know if it's love or if it's ovulation," she sings in the opening verse, before delivering the biting line, "When you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail." It's a sharp, self-aware metaphor that sets the tone for the rest of the album's journey.
Throughout "Hammer" and the rest of Virgin, Lorde also explores her gender and identity with striking vulnerability. "Some days I'm a woman, some days I'm a man," she sings, embracing fluidity and the freedom to exist beyond binaries. "I might have been born again, I'm ready to feel like I don't have the answers," she later sings. One of the most poignant lines arrives near the end, "It's a fucked up world, been to hell and back, but I've sent you a postcard from the edge." It's direct and beautifully emblematic of all that she has been through to get to this point.
Similarly, "Man of the Year" stands as one of the most haunting and emotionally raw moments on Virgin. It's a track that once again finds Lorde exploring her gender identity with such transparency. "You met me at a really strange time in my life," she confesses in the first verse, setting the tone for a song that continues to represent these recurring themes of rebirth. There's a quiet devastation in the way she sings lines like "My babe can't believe I've become someone else" and "Who's gonna love me like this?"
In an interview with Rolling Stone, she opened up about exploring her gender and really feeling like herself for the first time. "When we started writing the song 'Man of the Year,' I pictured the person who wanted to be singing that song on a stage in front of people. It was me in my jeans and I wanted to be shirtless, just in a chain and my jeans, but I wanted some sort of coverage and something to sort of hint it, at binding, and I pulled this tape out of the closet and sort of very quickly did these three strips across my chest and I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, that’s me, that's who I am. I really just like saw my body as an extension of the work of art."
The track moves with a tone of subdued intensity, as Lorde's inner masculinity begins to surface and take shape. The outro comes like a long-awaited personal revelation as she sings, "I didn't think he'd appear, lets hear it for the man of the year". That part of the song feels like it was a moment of clarity that definitely must have been so cathartic for her to be able to work through in the process of making this song. In her newsletter alongside it's release, Lorde shared that this is the song she is proudest of on Virgin, calling it "an offering from really deep inside me".
On "Shapeshifter", Lorde is so unfiltered in the way she lays out every version of herself. "I've been the ice, I've been the flame, I've been the prize, the ball and chain, I've been the dice, the magic eight, so I'm not affected," she sings in the chorus. "I've been the siren, been the saint, I've been the fruit that leaves a stain, I've been up on the pedestal, but tonight I just wanna fall". The way she sings about changing, or shapeshifting, into different versions of herself depending on who she's with is such a thought-provoking concept. It is such an interesting deconstruction of her own femininity and all of the facets of who she is. While most of these traits are inherently contradictory, they all exist simultaneously within her as well. Conceptually it takes a few listens to fully grasp the weight of all the experiences she's trying to convey. She sings about feeling like all of the relationships in her life are cyclical and how she feels stuck in the same loop of hooking up and temporary, casual flings, while also secretly wanting something deeper despite feeling emotionally closed off.
In her interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Lorde described the process of writing this song, "It's a very specific thing that I think a lot of women understand, I mean not just women probably, but writing that chorus I really felt something release in me. All the things that I've been to you to try and get some sort of validation to try and kind of fit, some sort of little thing to put something right in me. I don't know, I didn't even arrive anywhere, I didn't get to any kind of resolution meaning wise, I just wanted to take a moment and be like, 'Fuck.'"
She finds herself reverting back to a younger version of herself several times throughout the album in ways that are so emotionally poignant. Especially since she was so young when she started releasing music with Pure Heroine over a decade ago, these specific call backs to that time in her life are so powerful. "I become her again, visions of a teenage innocence," she sings, "How'd I shift shape like that?"
"Current Affairs" feels very connected in that way, as she sings about feeling scared to fall deeper into a new relationship. It features some of the strongest production of the entire album, along with a really cool sample of "Morning Love" by Dexta Daps that elevates the chorus to new heights. "It's so sexy and murky to me and I loved the contrast with the really organic fragile guitar stuff," Lorde wrote in an Instagram caption about including the sample on this song. "My bed is on fire, mama, I'm so scared," she sings in the chorus. "Don't know how to come back once I get out on the edge".
It's also one of the more overtly sexual and explicit songs on Virgin, as she sings lyrics like "He spit in my mouth like he's sayin' a prayer" and "You tasted my underwear". There are very provocative lyrics featured throughout the entire album and for the most part these lyrics land. I think it's easy to look past some of the more jarring moments because the production is consistently so strong and makes up for what it lacks lyrically at times. That said, the Pam & Tommy reference in the second verse of "Current Affairs" feels like a strange choice. It's just kind of an odd sentiment to throw into the middle of a song that otherwise feels emotionally raw and intimate, and it doesn't quite fit with the rest of what the rest of the song was going for. Some of the more jarring lyrics generally feel like they were included just as a way to say something controversial for the sake of it. That's an approach to songwriting that I don't tend to resonate with, especially when it's coming from an artist that is typically known for writing from a much more meaningful place.
"I think there are lines in 'Current Affairs' and 'Clearblue' that are pretty not safe for work, that felt kind of shocking to me, and profound too, I think. I didn't realize that I'd been wanting to hear a woman talk about sex the way I was talking about sex in this album," Lorde said in an interview with triple j. "Clearblue" is definitely the most overtly intimate, as it is completely stripped back instrumentally, with a nearly acapella performance. She sings about taking a pregnancy test and the flood of emotions that come with it - regardless of the result, or what she hoped it would be. "After the ecstasy, testing for pregnancy," she opens the song, setting the tone for a deeply personal and vulnerable reflection. Lyrically, it's kind of a lot to take in, but I do see what she was going for. It feels like she's tapping into the same raw, stream-of-consciousness style that Charli xcx leaned into throughout BRAT, especially on a track like "I think about it all the time". The difference, though, is that I don't think "Clearblue" quite hits the same note emotionally. Charli's writing felt brutally honest and unfiltered in her experience of deciding whether she wants to become a mother or not. She was able to capture a certain complexity that Lorde missed, especially as "Clearblue" comes in at just under two minutes long, it doesn't really have the space to build narratively in an impactful way.
"Favourite Daughter" is absolutely one of the most career-defining songs Lorde has ever written. It's a deeply personal tribute to her mom, and a reflection of the complex, beautiful connection between mothers and daughters, a theme that is at the heart of Virgin. Her exploration of womanhood is never isolated; it's always in conversation with the women who shaped her, especially her mom. The song captures the emotional push-and-pull of still feeling like a child just wanting to make her proud and feeling the weight of that expectation as well as her unconditional love and support. "I was a singer, you were my fan when no one gave a damn, it was you in the dark," she sings in the opening lines.
Even as she tours the world and sings in front of thousands, she's still that same child inside, performing not for the crowd, but for the one person she's always wanted to make proud. "'Cause I'm an actress, all of the medals I won for ya, panic attack just to be your favourite daughter," she sings in the second chorus. "Everywhere I run, I'm always runnin' to ya, breaking my back to carry the weight of your heart." It's a lyric that hits like a quiet, unspoken truth that so many daughters carry through their lives. Even in my case as the only daughter, it resonates so strongly in a way I never really heard expressed before in music.
In her interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Lorde talked about the inspiration behind this song and how meaningful it is for her. "That song is about my relationship with my mom who is the reason that I do everything that I do. She is the blueprint for me. But it's also as much as it’s about my mom you, when I’m saying, 'All the medals I won for you, breaking my back to be your favorite daughter,' I have felt that I was also singing to an audience. There's been this dynamic for the last 10, 12 years and then further back obviously, of wanting so badly to be loved and to get this approval and to be the favorite and it was really moving to me how even as I was sort singing through this song about about my sort of foremost idol and the person who I you know think is the most amazing in the world, I was also singing about this crazy thing it is to kind of have happen to you what I had happened to me at 16 and sort of just all of a sudden be another plane, another show, another plane, another show."
The way she shifts the final chorus is especially powerful. "I'm a good actress, look at the medals I won for ya, so you could imagine being a favourite daughter, everywhere I run, I’m always runnin' to ya, breaking my back just to be as brave as my mother," she sings. That last line is one of the most stunning she's ever written, it reminds me of such a gorgeous lyric from "Writer in the Dark" as well - "I am my mother's child, I'll love you till my breathing stops". "Favourite Daughter" beautifully represents such a special bond and the hope to be able to carry a fraction of her mother's strength within herself too.
"Broken Glass" is a stunning confrontation with the realities of self-esteem, especially through the lens of growing up as a young woman. It's a song that doesn't shy away from going all in with describing these feelings of self-hatred, finally vocalizing this internal struggle she has lived with for years. "I wanna punch the mirror to make her see that this won't last," she sings in the chorus, "It might be months of bad luck, but what if it's just broken glass?"
She sings about desperately wanting to finally break the cycle, while holding out the hope that the damage isn't permanent. "I spent my summer getting lost in math, making weight took all I had, won't outrun her if you don't hit back, it's just broken glass," is such a powerful lyric from the song that really does capture the quiet and exhausting struggle of an eating disorder and negative self-perception.
She sings about coming to terms with this self-hatred she had cultivated throughout her life and is now ready to embrace herself for who she is. Throughout Virgin, she retroactively revisits past versions of herself with a kind of emotional clarity that feels earned. "If She Could See Me Now" reads like a love letter to her younger self, an acknowledgment of the pain she carried and the resilience that followed. It's not about rewriting the past, but about honoring it. She's not trying to outrun who she was or is anymore, instead she is choosing to stand beside her.
"I bring the pain out the synthesizer, the bodies move like there's spirits inside 'em," feels like the mission statement behind so much of who Lorde is as an artist and the reason why she makes music. It's symbolic of the deep, almost spiritual, connection she's cultivated with her audience over the years. What makes this lyric even more powerful is the context it lives in. The song itself is about not wanting to chase fame or external validation like she did when she was younger. It's about stripping everything back to the core of why she started making music in the first place: for herself, and for the people who truly feel it. It's an undeniable connection.
The closing song of Virgin, "David", leaves me speechless every time I hear it. The song's title is in reference to Michelangelo's sculpture of David, a universal symbol of strength rooted in the biblical story. An interesting parallel is that she was the same age making this album as Michelangelo was when he started working on David - a detail that definitely feels like an intentional metaphor on Lorde's part. The statue becomes a symbol of strength and transformation. She's chipping away at herself, reshaping her identity, and sculpting something new from the broken pieces.
It was one of the first songs she and Jim-E Stack wrote for Virgin when they started working together in 2022, but weren't certain it would make it onto the album until the end of the process. She likens herself to the young and vulnerable David, and her ex as the powerful and towering Goliath. "Oh, dark day, was I just someone to dominate?" she sings in the opening lines of the song. "Worthy opponent, flint to my blade, now we're playing with shadows, at the Sunset Tower, you said, 'Open your mouth', I did". The song is quite dark and heavy to listen to, as she sings about feeling taken advantage of and manipulated by people that were much older and more powerful than her in the music industry from a young age. It's clear that it draws from a very personal and specific time in her life, one that she alludes to in the lyrics and metaphors throughout. "If I'd had virginity, I would have given that too" is the lyric that chills me every single time.
"There's a lot of strength to this album and I always felt that the end needed to be a real breakdown of that. I feel completely vulnerable on that song and even how we treat the vocal, it's so human, I felt this journey happening through the song, it sort of comes to this big quite machine-made climax, there's something very almost immortal about and then I'm back to being really mortal again at the end," Lorde said in an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music. "I don't know, a lot of the songs on this album, I just sort of followed them, I didn't really understand the song when it was coming out and I kept feeling this composite of memories but it feels undeniable to me and inevitable in this album that that's the biggest I've ever been, the climax of that song."
Listening to "David" is a truly moving, transcendent experience. The power in Lorde's voice is undeniable, there's a rawness and a clarity to it, as if she is finally breaking through everything that's held her back. It really feels like not just this album, but the entirety of her career, has been building to this moment as everything culminates in such a powerful way. The glitchy, fractured production mirrors that emotional unraveling. It builds and distorts as she sings, "I don't belong to anyone, I made you God 'cause it was all that I knew how to do, but I don't belong to anyone".
The repetition of "I don't belong to anyone" is an incredibly powerful way to close out this album. It feels reminiscent of a lyric from Halsey's "Hurricane": "I don't belong to no city, don't belong to no man". To be able to declare that kind of independence with such conviction is incredibly inspiring.
The closing lines of Virgin brings such a full circle moment as she sings, "Till you understand, tell it to 'em". It reminds me of how Pure Heroine began and ended - with "Tennis Court" asking, "Don't you think that it's boring how people talk?" and "A World Alone" closing with "Let 'em talk". That subtle symmetry is echoed here. She opens Virgin heartbroken in Washington Square Park, confessing, "Since I was seventeen, I gave you everything," and ends it in the same setting, but now with a declaration of autonomy. In a recent Instagram caption, she mentioned that the symmetry in Pure Heroine was accidental, but with Virgin, it was intentional. That choice makes the album feel even more deliberate and personal.
Everything about Virgin connects back to her early work in such a symbolic way that is deeply meaningful for those who have followed the journey of her music from the beginning. "David" features one of the best lyrics she has ever written: "Pure heroine mistaken for featherweight" - a reclamation of the woman she has always been. It honors the inner strength that has always lived within her, while fully embracing the legacy and impact she's carried into a new generation of artists. It's a beautiful moment of self-recognition, of acknowledging the power she held even when others couldn't see it, and even when she couldn't see it herself at times.
Thanks for reading! Check out more of my reviews of Lorde's music, including Pure Heroine, Melodrama, Solar Power and more linked here and below!
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