The pop mystic bares body and soul in her most unflinching work yet.
Lorde isn’t just dropping an album—she’s shedding skin. In her most revealing interview yet, the 28-year-old icon peeled back layers of her identity, trauma, and rebirth ahead of Virgin (June 27), confessing: “I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man”.
The Solar Power hiatus wasn’t a retreat—it was a revolution. Between psychedelic therapy, a breakup with longtime partner Justin Warren, and recovering from an eating disorder, Lorde embraced what she calls “the ooze”: a messy, glorious unfurling of self.
Quitting birth control after a decade severed her from “regulated femininity,” while MDMA sessions obliterated stage fright, freeing her to “tour without panic”.
Virgin mirrors this metamorphosis. The opening track declares “Some days I’m a woman / Some days I’m a man,” a mantra sparked when friend Chappell Roan asked if she’d gone nonbinary.
Lorde’s refusal to “box it up” extends to the album’s X-ray cover (her pelvis, IUD visible)—a “raw, primal” manifesto blending “the grotesque, the masc, the magnificent” .
Yet she’s cautious: “I’m not radical. I’m a wealthy cis white woman—this isn’t risking what trans folks face”.
Fans dissected her masculine fits and duct-tape-bound “Man of the Year” studio experiments, but the real shock is her vulnerability: “I starved myself to feel small. Now I’m taking space”.
With the Ultrasound Tour kicking off in September, Lorde’s message is clear—Virgin isn’t just an album. It’s a body, a battle, and a “100% written in blood” rebirth.
