Pop singer Lorde overcomes body image issues with new album Virgin

SINGAPORE – In her new album Virgin, released on June 27, New Zealand pop singer Lorde is finally at peace after grappling with body image and gender issues.

The single Man Of The Year, for example, was inspired by her experience at the 2023 GQ Men of the Year party. She had felt out of place as she was wearing a dress in a room full of men.

The songs on Virgin are meant to encourage listeners to liberate themselves and feel free in their bodies, the 28-year-old singer-songwriter says in a Zoom conference with Asian media.

“I really came into my own power making this album. I, in the past, have struggled with that, with feeling powerful, with feeling fully in my body,” says the singer, whose real name is Ella Yelich O’Connor.

“It was my intention with this one to make something that felt like it could carry the full weight of my inner world, ambition and history.”

Several songs in the album, such as Man Of The Year, are inspired by recent specific events. Others, like lead single What Was That, Favourite Daughter and If She Could See Me Now, have been influenced by a collection of different memories.

“With my songs, sometimes, it’s sort of a composite of moments. Sometimes, it’s one very specific sort of hour or minute or day that I’m trying to capture,” she replies to a question from The Straits Times.

The songs in Virgin reflect the different phases of her life.

“As a teen, I was brave, but I was shy and I was sort of always hiding,” she says.

“I realised my lyrics used to be a little bit more mysterious or metaphorical, but I feel like I’ve just come into myself a bit more. I’m a little bit less shy, although it is still hard for me sometimes, being out there, and I have to fight the urge to be cloaked in mystery, but I’m getting braver all the time.”

The new songs also harken back to periods in 2023, when she was “struggling with body image and eating issues”, and 2024, when she was feeling “a lot of promise and excitement and zest for life”.

“It felt like I was on this mission to really believe in myself and create an environment, build a house where I could live in for many more years.”

Sonically, she describes Virgin as a rhythm-driven album, but unlike her previous songs, the layers of singing are kept to a bare minimum.

“I feel like there are always vocal harmonies in my work, but on this album, they’re much simpler. I tried to just do very simple harmonies because I wanted it to be very plain, very simple and do only what was needed.”

Virgin is the fourth album from the singer and her first since 2021’s Solar Power. Born and raised in Auckland, she is best known globally for Royals, her debut single released in 2013.

She was only 16 when the hit song was released and became the youngest solo artiste to achieve a US Billboard No. 1 in more than 25 years. Royals also went on to win Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2014 Grammys.

The success of Royals has also been credited for paving the way for other female alternative-pop acts such as American singers Billie Eilish and Clairo.

In 2024, British singer Charli XCX revealed that Girl, So Confusing, a song from her critically acclaimed album Brat, was inspired by Lorde. The duo then collaborated on a remix of the song released two weeks after the original.

“I never could have predicted that Charli and I would collaborate in the way that we did on the remix of her song, but it has become one of my favourite songs that I’ve ever been a part of.”