What do you think of when I mention the New Zealand singer/songwriter Lorde? If you’re a casual music fan, you likely recall her massive 2013 debut hit, “Royals,” which vied for earworm of the year back then. The song spent a staggering nine weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, selling nearly 10 million copies back when music was still purchased. Today, it’s closing in on 1 billion views on YouTube and another 1.4 billion on Spotify.
But unless you got on the Lorde fan train in earnest back then—and there are, of course, quite a few of those fans—you likely haven’t spent much time thinking about her in the 12 years since.
So how do you get the world’s attention in 2025, with so many pieces of content vying for our evermore fractured attention spans?
I’ll cut to the chase: When her latest album, Virgin, dropped last week, fans who bought the vinyl edition were shocked to find an explicit photograph of the singer’s crotch on the album’s inner sleeve. She’s wearing transparent plastic pants, but reps for the singer have confirmed that the NSFW picture is indeed of her mostly bare midsection.
Meanwhile, on the outside of the album, a strangely intimate picture of a different kind—but, actually, the same anatomical area—can be seen. It’s an X-ray image of Lorde’s pelvis, with her bones, her pants’ zipper and an IUD clearly visible.
Lorde’s decision to publish revealing images of herself is hardly a new thing, with artists such as Madonna making broadly similar choices as far back as the 1990s. And just in days gone by, Lorde’s choice here has “worked” from a publicity standpoint: Lorde is front-page news again, with many voices expressing a range of opinions about her revealing pics, from outrage and shock to admiration and approval. And proving that sex still sells, Virgin is on track to debut at No. 2.
I wrote about helping our kids process Lorde’s choices regarding these images in a blog earlier today. But we also need to talk about the messages found in Lorde’s newest batch of songs, a collection of 12 synthesizer-soaked reflections on love and sex, intimacy and loneliness.
There’s little on Virgin that I’d characterize as obviously redemptive or positive. But we can observe that Lorde seems to be wrestling honestly and earnestly with questions related to her sense of identity. On “Hammer,” we hear, “Take an aura picture, read it, and tell me who I am (show me who I am).” Obviously, the “aura” reference has New Age spirituality connotations. But these lines do, I think, reflect the singer’s desire to understand who she is.
More confessional moments, some connected to her relationships with her parents, turn up elsewhere on the album. “Favourite Daughter” (and, yes, we realize that’s a British spelling) pours out the emotion of trying to live up to one or both parents’ expectations: “‘Cause I’m an actress, all of the medals I won for ya’/Breaking my back just to be your favorite daughter.”
“GRWM” explores Lorde’s struggles with growing up and embracing adulthood and womanhood in equal measure (“Maybe you finally know who you wanna be/A grown woman in a baby Tee”), and the song seems to point to her mother’s own courage the year that Lorde was born, 1996: “Wide hips, tooth chipped, ‘96/Skin scarred, looking forward/ … My mama’s trauma/Since ’96 been looking for a grown woman.”
“David” perhaps recognizes that we sometimes fall in love with unhealthy people whom we allow to shape our identity in dysfunctional relationships before we wise up later: “Why do we run to the ones we do?/I don’t belong to anyone.” Still, Lorde also despairs of ever experiencing a love as deep as that one: “Am I ever gonna love again?”
Similar pangs of loss are present on “What Was That” too: “Oh, I’m missing you/Yeah, I’m missing you/And all the things we used to do.” And she may regret having given too much of herself away to a young love as well: “Since I was 17, I gave you everything/Now we awake from a dream, well baby, what was that?”
“Man of the Year” plaintively asks, “Who’s gonna love me like this?/ … Love me like this/Now I’m broken open.”
Lorde hasn’t gone on record as being officially nonbinary or gender fluid. She still identifies as a woman, though she’s also said that some days she feels more in touch with what she would consider her masculine side. That sentiment is reflected on album opener “Hammer.” There, she sings, “I burn, and I sing, and I scheme, and I dance/Some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man.” Elsewhere on that track, she adds, “Don’t know if it’s love or if it’s ovulation.”
Later in that song, Lorde uses the f-word to the describe the world and tells an ex she’s been to “hell and back” because of him. The video for the song pictures the singer in various revealing poses and completely unclothed in a rope swing. Some surprisingly uncensored nudity is present briefly as well.
“What Was That” casually references ecstasy use and smoking (“MDMA in the back of the garden, blow our pupils up/ … I remember saying then, ‘This is best cigarette of my life’/Well, I want you just like that.”
“Shapeshifter” seemingly admits that Lorde’s had multiple sexual partners. She perhaps suggests that she can’t control her urge to look for intimacy in sex even though she knows better: “Everyone that I’ve slept with/All the pairs of hands, I’m reckless/If I’m fine without it, why can’t I stop?” Then she adds, “I’ll kick you out and pull you in/Swear that you were just a friend/And when it’s all over again/Say I’m not affected.”
The video for “Man of the Year” (which I watched and listened to on YouTube to do this review) involves Lorde removing her shirt, taping her breasts down with duct tape and writhing in a pile of sand in an empty room. Images where direct nudity would have been visible are censored on YouTube with a red bar. I’m uncertain what to make of the video, but it’s impossible not to wonder what’s going on in terms of Lorde’s self-conception in it.
“Current Affairs” provocatively describes what seems to be a casual sexual fling. Again, though, some part of Lorde seems to recognize that there’s danger here: “My bed is on fire/Mama, I’m so scared/Don’t know how to come back/Once I get to the edge.”
“Clearblue” is an ambiguous song about Lorde doing drugs, having unprotected passionate sex and then taking a pregnancy test: “After the ecstasy, testing for pregnancy, praying in MP3.” She reminisces quite graphically about the encounter, then regrets not having kept the pregnancy test: “Oh, I wish I’d kept the Clearblue/I’d remember how it feels to be.” It’s unclear from the context of the song’s other lyrics if the feeling she’s longing for is the intensity of the encounter itself or perhaps the feeling of being pregnant.
Lorde reveals a lot on this album, in her lyrics, in the album photos, in the videos. It’s graphic and explicit in any way you want to use those words.
It’s difficult not to feel like Lorde is leveraging her sexuality for attention here. At the same time, we also get a surprisingly vulnerable of a young woman who has looked for meaning and identity in sexuality and yet, it seem, hasn’t found it there. She longs to be known and accepted, even as she’s desperately exploiting herself for attention.
The result is more wince-inducing than erotic. It’s an ambivalent self-portrait. The gospel of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll isn’t quite working for her, even if there are—by her own admissions—some carnally transcendent moments. But in the end, this feels like an album from a young woman who’s tremendously, profoundly alone, despite having shared everything.
I have no doubt this combination of provocative elements will win plaudits and praise for Lorde’s raw “bravery.” But I don’t think that the courage Lorde’s confessions display here is the kind we want our daughters and sons emulating either.
At best, Lorde is deeply honest about her brokenness. But she has no answer for it.
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
