“Virgin” is the type of album you listen to while driving with the windows down, exploring a creek by yourself at dusk, crying in your room, or dancing in a bar. Lorde never disappoints, ever since her 16-year-old work of genius “Pure Heroine” was released in 2013.
I have never felt like an album was directed towards me before this one; every single song has been on repeat since the album’s release, and it is one of the only albums I’ve listened to that has absolutely no skips.
I have listened to this album at least a hundred times in the last few weeks since its release, and every single song resonates with a deeper part of me.
Despite the short length of only a 40-minute run time, which is typical for Lorde albums, there is no shortage of topics she discusses, from exploring the struggles of her eating disorder, gender identity and expression, analyzing the relationship between herself and her mother, the struggles of fame, and her 17-year-old heartbreak — Lorde understands it all.
Lorde brings us back to her debut album “Pure Heroine” in the song “Favorite Daughter,” writing, “Now that every day the plane takes off,” paralleling “Tennis Court,” where she sings “Pretty soon I’ll be getting on my first plane,” showing how dramatically her life has changed since her initial stardom.
Lorde additionally references her debut album in the song “David,” singing, “‘Pure Heroine’ mistaken for featherweight,” displaying how either a partner or the public dismissed her writing, despite the album literally being called “Pure Heroine,” referencing Lorde as a strong, intense figure.
This line can also be interpreted as a reference to David and Goliath, where David’s nimbleness factors into the underestimation as the ultimate winner of the fight. Her lyricism is genius and often holds double interpretations.
Don’t even get me started on “Favorite Daughter,” in which Lorde expresses an immense pressure to carry on her mother’s dreams of becoming a famous poet through her daughter’s music, feeling a need to impress her mother to make up for what her mother didn’t become.
All the accolades, accomplishments, and awards Lorde has won mean nothing if it doesn’t mean something to her mother, and I’m sure many of us are familiar with this feeling.
“Man of the Year” perfectly captures the feeling of being broken following losing someone you care about — feeling unlovable, like they were the only person who could see you, stuck somewhere between wanting them back, hating them, and needing to get away.
She sings, “Whose gonna love me like this?” in the most earnest, yearning way that every time I listen to it, I almost cry.
On my first listen, hearing her sing, “You met me at a really strange time in my life,” literally took my breath away, as a survivor of an ex whose favorite movie was “Fight Club.” Yes, I was warned, no, I didn’t run away.
If you don’t know, this is a reference to the 1999 David Fincher film, “Fight Club,” which depicts a man who dreams of an exaggerated version of the ideal man and essentially idolizes violence. If a man tells you that it’s his favorite movie, run far away, and Lorde knows this.
In this album, you move through Lorde’s subconscious with her, following her thought process of grief and healing as she moves through mental illness, losing friendships, and struggling with fame. Despite the mournful subject matter, Lorde finds an upbeat instrumental to accompany her introspective lyrics, somehow making me want to dance and cry simultaneously.
Her head-voice is airy, soft, and dreamy, and she mixes this with the juxtaposition of her strong, deep chest voice that could carry through an entire room, and she found the perfect way to combine these, almost as if she is performing a duet with herself.
In “If She Could See Me Now,” Lorde speaks to her past self and starts to appreciate her talents, writing, “I bring the pain out the synthesizer / The bodies move like there’s spirits inside ’em,” acknowledging her talent in her production skills, making crowds dance and have fun through her music, a skill she didn’t use to recognize within herself.
But the chorus is the best part of this song, as she writes, “Baby, whenever you break me / I’d watch it happen, like an angel looking down / It made me a woman, being hurt like that.” In these lines, she acknowledges that she can’t change the past and there is no use looking back on past relationships that failed, but turned her into the woman she is today.
Favorite songs: “Current Affairs”, “Man of the Year”, “Broken Glass”, “If She Could See Me Now”, “Favorite Daughter”
Now, I might be a little biased because I have been a Lorde fan since her hit “Royals,” but this might be my favorite album of all time — absolutely no songs on it are skips for me, and I had a difficult time even determining my favorite songs since I wanted to list them all.
