Some days, I wonder if we will ever get another Lorde. A disillusioned 16-year-old in her bedroom singing about the vapid obsession with celebrity culture and exorbitant wealth; dark platform boots, all-black clothes, sitting pretty atop Billboard charts and toting two shiny Grammys.
That was 12 years ago. Since then, we’ve had our fair share of burgeoning teenaged pop stars skyrocketing into stardom, supernova-ing, popcorning into brilliant new players in the pop scene, much like Lorde herself. Still, there was something so special about Lorde’s debut. The minimalist bones of Pure Heroine were a catalyst for a new movement of darkwave female pop; a teen from a small New Zealand suburb changing the sonic geography of pop music forever.
The turned corner into Solar Power took many by surprise, largely for this reason. Aptly titled Solar Power soaked in the sun and simmered in beachy bohemian melodies. Many fans asked: Where was the Lorde drenched in shadows and misery? Who was this, standing in the sunlight, singing against beachy guitar chords, wearing her name and her face? Solar Power was poorly received for many reasons — its deviance from the Lorde musical profile and persona she’d cultivated being one of them.
On 2025’s Virgin, Lorde finally seems to come home, back to the dark synth-pop that spurred her career in the first place. This time, she is no longer a moody teen recording pop hits in a suburban household but instead the icon of wealth and celebrity culture she sings of in “Royals,” skating through brat summer at Charli XCX’s side. The gloom of her teenage angst has been plunged into A-list fame; it’s jarring to think about just how much has changed for her since Pure Heroine’s reception.
In many ways, Virgin epitomizes this trajectory. Lorde goes from an observer living in teenage sparkle to the adult who has forgotten. There is nowhere to turn but inward, to the mind of a privileged young woman, trying to make sense of the adult body she’s found herself in.
And inward she turns. Lorde has never shied away from introspection in her music, but Virgin is perhaps the most intimate deep dive of Lorde we’ve seen to date — it feels borderline invasive. Every catchy electropop hook simmers like a “dear diary” entry. Her repertoire has largely been born out of the teenage desire to be seen, but on Virgin, Lorde’s infatuation with youth and teenagehood has passed, or at least blossomed into a sophisticated nostalgia. And for Lorde, this manifests as sliding herself beneath a microscope for the public eye — perhaps not to feel seen, but to finally understand herself. For better or worse, Virgin wasn’t written for anybody except for Lorde.
This becomes apparent in the borderline hubris coating Virgin. In the second line of “Man of the Year,” Lorde sings of ego death, and suddenly her hit single feels like college coffee house slam poetry, full of itself the way 20-somethings so often are. Similarly, “GRWM,” is a play on the girlhood staple of Get Ready With Me vlogs. Eventually, Lorde reveals that the acronym actually stands for “grown woman” within the context of the track. However, this subversion feels performative given the underwhelming lyricism; the payoff is supposed to be “a grown woman in a baby tee,” but the track is too compact to effectively build up to it. The lyricism lacks a cohesive sense of narrative and emotionality. Instead, we are given fragments of staccato details pulled from her life with frustrating vagueness.
This is Virgin’s greatest flaw — we’re promised an emotional gut-punch, but the record is too short, too humdrum to achieve it. Many of the tracks blend together, and the uniformity isn’t cohesive — it’s just boring.
Virgin, much like Lorde’s prior releases, sits firmly in the realm of dance-pop, returning to the signature synth-pop sound that has become so quintessentially Lorde — penultimate “If She Could See Me Now” even includes an interpolation of Baby Bash’s “Suga Suga” in its first verse. But despite Virgin’s driving, pulsing electronics and poppy melodies, some of the sonics fall flat, especially when broken down on the track level. It’s clear that Virgin is best experienced as a whole, with most individual tracks lacking a certain gravitas due to the relatively sparse production.
Despite some questionable moments, the highlights of Virgin are still the result of Lorde’s songwriting. The best moments on the record hold the listener close, leaning into the intimacy she’s fostered through cheeky album art and a reputation for cutting lyricism. “Favourite Daughter” navigates Lorde’s relationship with her mother, seeking validation from her. Lyrically and sonically, the track is straightforward, but this simplicity does not render it any less effective. According to Lorde, it was the most difficult track to write, produce and sing.
The result is cathartic: the tragedy of Lorde masquerading as a pop hit. Lorde has become larger than life, but “Favourite Daughter” demonstrates her ability to remain relatable and human, despite her A-list status. “David,” the record’s closer, shines for similar reasons: its vulnerability. It’s the perfect finale to an album that takes such a deep dive into Lorde’s burgeoning adulthood. Sonically, “David” diverges the most from the palette cultivated through the remainder of Virgin. The track begins in sparse ambiance before building to its climax, a full-bodied chorus of vocals layered on top of one another. “David” feels contoured, textured and lush, and it achieves the emotion much of the album is chasing. If only the rest of the album had teed it up properly.
On Virgin, Lorde isn’t seen — she’s see-through. It’s a transparency that emulates the X-ray imagery of the album art. Virgin spans the entire spectrum of Lorde’s adulthood, delving into everything from gender identity, body image and her relationship with her mother. Never has the division between audience and artist felt so paper-thin, as if we’re perched within the mind that crafted the art. When she sings that “There’s broken blood in me, it passed through my mother from her mother down to me” on “Clearblue,” it feels wrong to bear witness to something so personal. Despite some lyricism missteps elsewhere on the album, it’s clear that Lorde is drawing on a real pain. This vulnerability is the album’s greatest strength, displaying the inner workings of one of the most influential artists of our time. For all its flaws, Virgin feels real, and it feels like it truly belongs to Lorde. This is Lorde reborn.
Daily Arts Writer Amaya Choudhury can be reached at amayach@umich.edu.
