Lorde says she felt her gender “broadening” while making her fourth album Virgin. (Thistle Brown)
Singer-songwriter Lorde has explained that her new album Virgin was inspired in part by her “coming into [her] masculinity” and feeling her “gender broadening a little bit”.
Last week, the New Zealand-born musician released “What Was That”, her first original solo track in four years, and she’s now delving into some of the inspiration behind it.
Speaking to artist Martine Syms for culture magazine Document Journal, Lorde – who’s real name is Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor – explained that “What Was That” was “the first music of [her] rebirth”.
“I had come back from London to New York after this period of great turbulence in my personal life. Becoming single, but also really facing my body stuff head-on, and starting to feel my gender broadening a little bit,” she shared.
“Just being back in my house and feeling this big wave of grief. I just kept thinking, What was all of that? Whether it was my seven-year relationship or a pandemic or sacrificing my body to my career since I was 16 or 17. This feeling of, Oh, my God, so much has moved through me. And there’s so much mystery and pain.”
The “Mood Ring” singer went on to explain that her work can sometimes be inspired by something as simple as a wuote, like the one from Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem which has filled her Instagram bio for several years.
During a walk through New York’s East Village, she spotted an advert about joining a band, which ran with the question “Do you have the stones?” which has since become part of Virgin’s mission statement.
“I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s tight.’ I didn’t understand what it was saying at first. I know now it’s like, do you think you have the balls? But it gave me this feeling that there was a mysticism to it. ‘The stones’ felt like, do you have the sort of touchstones or the talismans to go there?
“Seeing that as I was also coming into my masculinity a bit more as well. That became the thing we [Lorde and Virgin‘s producers] would say to each other while making music. When there was a crossroads where we’d want to take it there but we were scared, we’d be like, ‘Do we have the stones?’ And then we wrote it into a lyric, and I got it on a hat.”
Elsewhere in her chat with Syms, the 28-year-old said that her process of making an album is “open” and starts by “reading”, adding that before making Virgin she read “a lot of queer writers” and books “about the body”.
Lorde announced earlier this week that Virgin, her fourth album, would be arriving on 27 June. In an email to fans, the two-time Grammy Award winner explained that she was “trying to make a document that reflected my femininity: raw, primal, innocent, elegant, openhearted, spiritual, masc”.
She added: “I’m proud and scared of this album. There’s nowhere to hide. I believe that putting the deepest parts of ourselves to music is what sets us free.”
The album artwork for Virgin features an icy blue x-ray of a pelvis – believed by fans to be Lorde’s – with a belt buckle, zip, and birth control device visible.
Lorde has since gone deeper to explain the message she was hoping to convey through naming her album title Virgin, posting a breakdown of the word on her Instagram Stories yesterday (1 May).
She shared a screen grab of a description of the term, seemingly taken from the internet, which reads: “The word ‘virgin’, some say, was derived from a Greek word that meant ‘not attached to a man, a woman who was ‘one-in-herself’. Goddesses like Ishtar (Assyrian-Babylonian), Diana (Roman), Astarte (Greek) and Isis (Egyptian) were called ‘virgins’ not because they were inexperienced but because they were strong and independent.”
A second explanation Lorde posted continues: “There is also evidence that the word ‘virgin’ derived from the combination of the Latin words ‘vir-‘ (for man, as in ‘virile’) and ‘-gyne’ ( for woman, as in gynecology) – a man-woman or androgynous person.”
Virgin is released on 27 June. “What Was That” is available now.
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