To be a fan of New Zealand-born singer-songwriter Lorde (Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor) is to be comfortable with waiting. The time between her groundbreaking debut at 17, Pure Heroine, and her widely considered masterpiece sophomore album Melodrama was four years. The wait between Melodrama and her sun-soaked third project Solar Power was another four. It’s only natural that despite all the begging for new music (and the drop of last year’s instantly iconic “Girl, so confusing” remix with Charli xcx), her fourth record, bluntly titled Virgin, would take another four years to release.

Of course, if you read into Lorde’s messaging in her work, the four year gaps make sense. The entire Lorde brand is one of maturing, with her music consistently reflecting on her own life up to this point. Each project she’s created reflects a new, more mature viewpoint that she’s attained about life. While Pure Heroine was youthfully depressed, boasting songs about friendships and cynicism about the world around her, Melodrama was about first experiences with drugs, parties, and extreme heartbreak. Solar Power switched her sound from a traditional synth pop to a more laid-back, sunny vibe with lyrics that reflect the oceanic environment Lorde had found herself in. Yet it nonetheless offers stark commentary on growing up as a celebrity and watching yourself become a part of that culture. 

This is why Lorde calls her fourth album, Virgin, her rebirth. It is an album born and raised in New York City, inspired by revelations on previous relationships, self-hatred, and heartbreak induced new experiences with gender identity and sexuality. As the album she’s made from the most mature standpoint, Virgin is Lorde’s most explicit project, but also her most confessional from a lyrical standpoint. 

The first track, “Hammer” instantly opens with lyrics about mystic spirituality, ovulation, and the line “some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man.” The electronic chorus loudly states that she’s been born again, the theme she wants you to know throughout the whole album. After all, the old Lorde would never have explicitly mentioned jerking off, hook-ups, having her mouth spit in, or the rush of unprotected sex. Even if her use of blunt lyricism can feel jarring or even performative, it is still valuable because it shows Lorde at her most honest to herself.

One might think that the rebirth she’s describing in Virgin has already been seen in Solar Power, where she suddenly embraced spirituality and became the type of artist who dances at the beach rather than the club. But Lorde has made it very clear that Solar Power was a lie. This album about joy was created by someone who was not only unhappy but was actually dealing with intense body dysmorphia and an eating disorder. Virgin approaches this topic head-on, with “Broken Glass” being a song explicitly about an eating disorder and getting over intense self-hatred. The rebirth Lorde is describing isn’t a new aesthetic. It’s a blunt honesty she’s developed as she matures. 

In lead single “What Was That”, Lorde directly addresses being 17 when she first began recording music and her growth since then. Now that more than a decade has passed, she’s able to look back at that time and ask “what was that?” about the people who manipulated and the situations she was in over a killer bass drop and searing synths. Really, every track throughout the album depicts a new state of understanding and change in Lorde’s life: “Man of the Year” mentions a former “ego-death” after the end of a relationship and having to claim herself as the titular Man of the Year, “Favorite Daughter” is a bouncy pop song that doesn’t hide how it’s about desperately trying to fit into your family and be the woman they want her to be, and “GRWM” serves as the antithesis for the anthemic Pure Heroine track “Ribs”, where she’s no longer afraid of getting older but instead begs to finally feel like a grown woman.

In between the dance pop and addicting synths sits “Clearblue,” an entirely a cappella song about the thrills of unsafe sex and taking a pregnancy test. Sex isn’t a new topic for music, but Lorde wants to depict it as something so intriguing that it becomes a habit rather than something purely sexy. The line “I rode you until I cried” is definitely sexual, but it is laced with a deeper sadness in the context of the song. Even when “Current Affairs” samples a Dexta Dap song with the lyrics “Girl, your pussy good, it grip me good a me fi tell you”, it does so while using the idea of intimacy as something that becomes severely depressing in the wake of losing a lover. What used to be thrilling and fun has now become something wistful, a reminder of what was.

If the title wasn’t obvious enough, as a 28-year-old woman, Lorde wants to remind the listener that she has shed her teenage innocence and is now hardened by the world. In “Shapeshifter”, she sings about all of the different women she’s been through her life to suit her romantic and sexual relationships, which inevitably leads to the miscommunication and sense of doom she writes about on “Current Affairs” and throughout the whole album. Even some of the weaker tracks, “If She Could See Me Now,” have a lyrical richness about growing up and thinking about who you used to be. Lorde’s childhood innocence is gone now, replaced with a confidence in her identity, self-hatred and all. 

The final track, “David”, is the culmination of Virgin’s thematic messaging. It is a slow track filled with intense glitches towards the end and gut-wrenching lyrics. She wonders if she was just someone for the subject to dominate even though she would’ve given that person her virginity. “David” is about every topic she’s mentioned on this album: the loss of a lover, the realization that it wasn’t a perfect relationship, a sexual comedown, and growing up. 

While the songs are a bit too similar in their instrumentation and while the album doesn’t feel entirely cohesive sonically, it is Lorde’s lyrical prowess and consistent honesty that makes the entire experience feel 100% Virgin. Lorde wants to be more open about being messy and to show every side of herself, and on those fronts, she succeeds with her harsh frankness. Virgin at its core can be a deeply relatable and necessary album for the right person, the person who needs to know that it’s okay to feel disgusting in your own body as a woman, to not have the answers about life, and to have confusing sexual thoughts. And for Lorde, it provides such a refreshing catharsis that despite your own personal taste, it is undeniably the album she needed to make next. 

8.5/10