VIRGIN BY LORDE: TRACK BY TRACK

Credit of Columbia Record. Protected under fair use.

After four years of almost mute radio silence, Lorde has returned with in her most ultra-revealing, vulnerable form yet. Virgin is the fourth studio album by Lorde, and the first since 2021’s Solar Power. To preface, this album feels like a visceral shedding of skin, and a personal rebirth that confronts and exposes the chaos that accompanies late-20s womanhood with a brand of earnestness that could feel almost invasive. At 35 minutes, Virgin is Lorde’s shortest record, but every ticking second feels weighed down with raw honesty, intricacy, and an overwhelming aspect of both physical and emotional vulnerability. 

We have known Lorde to have a precocious wisdom on her side, but now she is attempting to unlearn and detach from it. This album is about not knowing; questioning everything about her identity and body, sexuality, upbringing, and so much more. Notably, she doesn’t frame the exploration of her own uncertainties through bombast. Instead, she often strips the lyrics down to statements, or traverses her way through emotional trajectories by disassembling them into a line. What remains is a body of work as sonic, and sound-averse, as it is, lyrical and unkempt. Though it’s littered with synth-pop nostalgia, Virgin articulates itself as a love letter to the art of starting over.

Despite being sonically dense, Virgin is not maximalist; there's space for breath, silence, dissonance, and unmediated feeling. It reaches back to Lorde's past phases, most notably the confessional drama of Melodrama, but expanding further into the body. She sings the language of sex, desire, gender, and self as sensation, not conceptual abstractions: sweaty, awkward, terrifying, and ecstatic. This is, fundamentally, an album about trying on various selves and shedding them as quickly.

“Hammer”

The album opens with a hum of tension: “I’m ready to feel like I don’t have the answers,” she admits, setting the tone for the emotional ambiguity to follow. “Hammer” uses propulsion as metaphor, she’s not running toward clarity but barreling into the unknown. The lyricism is blunt but deeply evocative, capturing the thrill of letting go and the fear embedded in that freedom.

“What Was That”

A song of clarity after collapse, this track deals with post-breakup introspection. But rather than offering closure, Lorde chooses curiosity: "Since l was seventeen, I gave you everything / Now we wake from a dream, well, baby, what was that?" she asks. It’s a forceful question that reframes romantic disappointment as a lesson in misalignment within others and of self.

“Shapeshifter”

This track finds Lorde listing versions of herself molded by past lovers: “I've been the prize, the ball, the chain / I've been the dice, the magic eight.” She frames her countless rekindles and battle scars in the name of love as trength, as the confession “I’m not affected,” is repeated. The duality of these lines, defiant and desperate, captures the heart of the album’s lyrical tension. 

“Man of the Year”

On this track, Lorde confronts gender identity with both poetic clarity and sonic innovation, “Now I’m Broken Open” she admits. The sparse arrangement, just voice and bass at first, mirrors the song’s vulnerability, before exploding into a chaotic crescendo that mirrors the fluidity of the subject matter. It's a gender eulogy and a rebirth rolled into one.

“Favourite Daughter”

One of the album’s emotional anchors, this song sees Lorde addressing her mother with raw honesty. “Panic attack just to be your favourite daughter / Everywhere I run, I'm always runnin' to ya / Breaking my back to carry the weight of your heart,” she sings, acknowledging the invisible thread of approval she still seeks. The lyricism is diaristic yet mythic, treating maternal influence as both grounding force and haunting specter. As the song crosses the finish line, there’s no resolution, just the ache of recognition.

“Current Affairs”

Perhaps the most audacious moment on the record with a sample of Morning Love by Dexter Dapps, this track definitely does not shy away from the erotic. She sings, “He spit in my mouth / Like he’s saying a prayer.” However, Lorde’s songwriting makes it more than just sensual it’s also reflective, wounded. She moans and murmurs between lines that stretch syllables like tendons. 

“Clearblue”

A lyrical highlight and thematic linchpin of the record, “Clearblue” delivers more in under two minutes than most ballads do in four. It zooms in on the moment after sex when reality sets in a pregnancy test, “After the ecstasy, testing for pregnancy, praying in MP3.” Her voice loops the phrase “I’m free, I’m free,” drenched in vocal processing that reflects both euphoria and fear. Here, freedom feels like both a gift and a curse, beautiful, terrifying, amd ambiguous.

“GRWM”

An acronym commonly framed as “Get Ready With Me” might sound like a lighthearted detour, but it’s anything but. Instead, Lorde uses it as a to describe a “Grown Woman,” as she reflects on childhood joy, simple routines like brushing hair and putting on lip gloss. She further contrasts it with adult dissociation. “I've been looking for a, been looking for / Grown woman” she exlaims, highlighting the disjointedness of modern femininity. The juxtaposition of warm melodies and abrasive percussion mirrors the internal conflict.

“Broken Glass”

Arguably the album’s standout, this track turns a pop banger into a harrowing confession about body image and disordered eating. “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,” she sings, her tone sugary sweet over devastating context. What makes “Broken Glass” exceptional isn’t just the subject matter, similar to how eating disorders contaminate every inch of life, Lorde is able to extract pain into each and every lyric. 

“If She Could See Me Now”

Here, Lorde refers to a past relationship that left her fragmented, however her perspective positions her with wit. “In the gym, I'm exorcising / All my demons, make 'em keep riding / Yesterday I lifted your body weight.” The song is a masterclass in emotional detachment, where memory is replayed not to savor, but to erase. The lyrical progression from dissonance to resolution mirrors her inner process of healing.

“David”

The album’s final track ends on a bang, but in a literal context, a whisper. “Am I ever gonna love again?” she quietly repeats, as her voice is bare against empty space. The production drops away, as if even the music is afraid to answer. It's a devastating coda, less a conclusion than a question mark hanging in the air.

Lorde creates an album that is fiercely self-scrutinizing but never self-indulgent. Her talent for finding clarity in emotional chaos cannot be rivaled. Her lyrics are always about moving toward the truth, no matter how splintered and painful that truth may be. Virgin is an act of confrontation, raw and reformed, she sings not to make sense of herself, but to understand herself anew. 

Listen to Virgin here.