Lorde sounds like an artist reborn on Virgin, taking on themes of shame, renewal, desire, and defiance with the precision of a poet and the instincts of a pop disruptor.
New Zealand superstar Lorde returns with her fourth studio album, a daring, beat-forward resurrection that bridges the bedroom minimalism of Pure Heroine and the operatic volatility of Melodrama. Clocking in as her most immediate and emotionally exposed album since her 2013 debut, Virgin feels like Lorde’s hard reset; a confrontational recovery of her vulnerability, sensuality, and strength.
Co-produced by Lorde and longtime sonic shape-shifter Jim-E Stack, Virgin is lean but rich, its sparse structures dressed in neon-lit detail courtesy of a stacked crew of collaborators, including Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange), Dan Nigro, Fabiana Palladino, Buddy Ross, and Andrew Aged. Together, they create an atmosphere that’s part underground club, part confession booth, part open wound.
Lead single “What Was That” detonated expectations when it debuted at No. 1 on the US Spotify chart. It’s the kind of song only Lorde could pull off as it’s all things icy and intimate, twitchy with self-reckoning, and carried by a low-end rumble that could rattle glass. It’s the sound of someone stepping out of the haze and asking the question we’ve all been avoiding. Across the album, there’s a raw, tactile quality to her lyrics - sometimes brutally specific, often devastating, but always human.
On tracks like “Hammer” and “Man Of The Year,” Lorde fuses fragmented thoughts into something hypnotic and holy. Other times she nearly whispers her way through grief on moments that feel like a resurrection by way of breakdown. This isn’t just a comeback, it’s a reckoning. It’s pulsing, flesh-and-bone pop, steeped in rhythm and the real world. Lorde has always sounded ahead of her time, but on Virgin, she sounds grounded and rooted in something harder, lonelier, and more honest.