LORDE - Virgin

It quickly became clear how Lorde's hugely anticipated return to the studio was, on one hand, loaded with fan expectations, and on the other, well supported by a management team fully aware of what was at stake. California, Coachella Festival, mid-April 2025, Charli XCX, the London popstar who has dominated the world over the past twelve months thanks to the "Brat" whirlwind - a marketing operation so successful it should be taught in universities - brings Lorde onstage to perform "Girl, So Confusing" together, a duet that had already appeared on the super-expanded version of "Brat". A week later the New Zealand singer-songwriter (with a Croatian passport too, courtesy of her mother, the celebrated poet Sonja Yelich) caused scenes of sheer pandemonium, bringing the busy Washington Square, right in the middle of Manhattan, to a standstill for hours as she sang and danced atop a cube to "What Was That", her new single. The album hadn't been announced yet, but by that point it was abundantly clear that something big was about to happen.

Lorde, one of the most beloved pop artists of recent years, has never been in a rush to release new material: each of the four albums she's put out so far has been rigorously spaced four years apart. But the most recent one, “Solar Power” (2021), close to the hippie-bucolic atmospheres of Lana Del Rey, hadn't fully won over her earliest supporters: she must have noticed this herself, seeing as the songs from “Solar Power” have already been dropped from her concert setlists.

“Virgin” deliberately marks a return to the sounds that defined her first two albums, with a title that evokes a return to innocence, a desire for rebirth, but which in reality lands like a punch in the eye from the very image chosen for the cover. Look at it closely: it depicts an X-ray of Lorde's pelvis, highlighting a few “worn” objects: the metal belt buckle, the jeans zipper (which brings to mind “Sticky Fingers” by the Rolling Stones, with a zip that could really be pulled down), an intrauterine coil, indissolubly tied to both intense pain and an act of sexual independence. A snapshot meant to shock, skillfully condensing many of the themes present on an album that sounds like a process of inner inspection: inner demons, MDMA, abortion, complicated romantic relationships, explorations of one's own identity (along with the now-fashionable reflections on gender), issues with one's own body, eating disorders (she's admitted to having had them recently, and tells us about it in “Broken Glass”), motherhood, unprotected sex, accidental conception, pregnancy tests, crises of confidence, a desire for redemption.

The opening track, “Hammer”, begins with a couple of extremely powerful images that don't require much interpretation. “There’s a heat in the pavement, my mercury’s raising/ Don’t know if it’s love or if it’s ovulation”: it's the scene of an abortion. Followed by the equally telling “Some days I’m a woman/ Some days I’m a man”, a new potential anthem for the fluid community. It's clear right away: this is no ordinary album, its impact is genuinely striking, thankfully tempered by a liberating approach skillfully crafted on the musical side.

“Virgin” strings together a series of pop songs among the most beautiful and intriguing heard during the first half of 2025, no offense to the many other ladies who in these months are giving it their all to leave a mark: Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus are the first two names that might come to mind. If you pay attention, what happens between track 2 and track 5 could come straight out of any recent work by Taylor Swift (and that's meant as a compliment), taking advantage, among other things, of a moment in which the record-breaking superstar seems to have decided to take a small step back from certain recent urges for the spotlight, with fans all over the world (and there are so many of them) ready to welcome with open arms whichever new idol comes along, someone to identify with, capable of delivering the same load of aching introspection, as has happened in recent months with the promising Gracie Abrams.

And this time there's no Jack Antonoff involvement to justify some supposed stylistic proximity between Lorde and Swift — no, this time Lorde's right-hand man is Jim-E Stack, the much in-demand American musician and producer, born in '92, who co-produces and co-writes all eleven tracks on the record. Among them, "Shapeshifter" is the high point, a perfect pop song built on an irresistible yet melancholy garage rhythm that — I'm ready to bet on it — we'll remember as one of the great musical moments of the 2020s. The following "Man Of The Year" is the album's other peak, its darkest and most intense moment, where Lorde expresses the will to be reborn, the longing to turn into something different, the transition toward the new — the same concept so well expressed by Rosalia three years ago on "Motomami".

In Lorde's poetics there's no longer room for materialism and worldliness, endless parties and nights of reckless abandon; instead there's emotional depth, reflections on identity and new awareness, gained by a woman who's now sailing toward her thirties (she turns 29 on November 7th). Being many things at once, maybe finally meeting the person who can make you shine with your own light again, seeking intensely physical experiences — recounted here simply and directly, without mincing words — craving new experiences, returning to a state of reclaimed "virginity", for an album that, production-wise, is often left deliberately minimal. This journey reaches its sublimation on the brief "Clearblue", named after a pregnancy test: here Lorde shows her ability to concretely translate all the vulnerability a woman faces before a test she has to take, suspended between the desire for motherhood and the fear of becoming a mother, with the risk of finding herself trapped in a situation that can tear a couple apart. A moment of such extreme intimacy could only be rendered with the protagonist's voice alone, with no instrument to accompany her.

A minimal state is also reserved for the closing "David", in which Lorde declares "I don't belong to anyone" — once again a statement of freedom, thrown out to the world, as the artist declares her own act of vindication against those who hastily underestimated her at the start of her career.

It's hard to say right now, in the heat of the moment, whether this album could be considered Lorde's best to date (this writer thinks so, but it's better not to stray into overly subjective, personal judgments); what's certain is that “Virgin” is an album that positions itself as absolutely central to the economy of contemporary pop music , a work dense with meaning that hands us, in 2025, a complete and mature artist. Lorde is no longer the sixteen-year-old girl who stumbled into the success of a lifetime (back in 2013, with her debut album “Pure Heroine”), nor is she still riding the vivid success of “Melodrama” (2017); instead, she feels ready to literally lay herself bare and make her own experiences, her struggles, her way of being a woman today, universal, letting millions of young people recognize themselves in her lyrics while also dancing to the rhythm of her songs.

With “Virgin”, Lorde proves that a synthesis between Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift can exist, or perhaps a fourth way altogether, why not, separate and distinct from the other three. Lorde becomes the voice of an entire generation, unable to escape the isolation of the bedroom, convinced it's experiencing the world through its smartphones but in reality completely alienated and dissociated from everything around it.

“Virgin” is, we're certain, an album that will bring its author both satisfaction and recognition, and as I listen to it again, I keep thinking about how writing pop music is neither simple nor trivial at all: it's a magical, mysterious balance, a precious art that deserves everyone's respect.

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01/07/2025