Virgin [Clear CD]

by Lorde

Overview

Like the X-ray photograph of her pelvis and IUD on the album cover, on 2025's Virgin, Lorde burns through her persona, deconstructing each layer to get to the essential core. It's a dichotomous title for the 28-year-old New Zealand-born artist, who has been a star since emerging at 17 with the literate, preternatural swagger of her breakthrough hit "Royals," and who's been through several relationships since; the end of the last one purportedly served in part as a catalyst for the raw emotions she explores here. Yet it's no mere breakup album, and dichotomies -- especially the bold contrasts between who she once was and who she has become -- are manifest throughout Virgin. There's a feeling that having grown up in the public eye, Lorde is reclaiming her teenage self, a process that comes with both a dionysian desire for physical touch and an anarchic freedom of choice. It's also one that finds her remerging as a kind of adult tween, or "grown woman in a baby tee" as she knowingly declares on "GRWM." And while there's an exploratory abandon to her work here, she isn't carefree. She's deep in her adult woman's body, spinning on her hormones, as she sings in "Hammer": "My mercury's rising/Don't know if it's love or if it's ovulation." Thankfully, she has moved on from the beachy folk globalism of 2021's slack Solar Power, and Virgin pulsates with a percussive, sweaty, summer-in-the-city energy, as if she's just left the dance club and the night is still hot. Produced with Jim E-Stack who has worked on records by Bon Iver, HAIM, and Caroline Polachek, among others, Virgin is an album of blunt honesty and grooves. It's a two-fisted punch Lorde serves early on with "What Was That," a euphoric, sad/happy dance anthem about owning both the good and the bad from your past and moving forward. It's also the song that comes the closest to matching the defiant, rave euphoria of "Green Light" and 2017's Jack Antonoff-produced Melodrama. However, where that album was glassy and hypercolored, Virgin is diffuse and organic; dark woody bass lines bump up against fractured drums and humming air-conditioner-on-the-fritz keyboards. Songs like "Shapeshifter," "Favourite Daughter," and "Current Affairs" are also stylistically attenuated, balancing the post-punk pugilism of bands like the National with the operatic pathos of Kate Bush. Vocally, Lorde has never sounded more intimate and mutative, whispering overshared details of her daily life before soaring into the sun with a diva's golden resonance. On Virgin, she is transcendentally witchy, harmonizing with herself both literally and spiritually, a pop star in the throes of creative rebirth. ~ Matt Collar

Product Details

Release Date:	06/27/2025
Label:	Republic Records
UPC:	0602478121333

Tracks

1. Hammer
2. What Was That
3. Shapeshifter
4. Man of the Year
5. Favourite Daughter
6. Current Affairs
7. Clearblue
8. GRWM
9. Broken Glass
10. If She Could See Me Now
11. David

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Lorde   Primary Artist,Synthesizer,Drum Machine,Drums,Piano,Vocals,Keyboards,Wurlitzer,Glockenspiel,Guitar (Bass),Guitar (Electric)
Daniel Nigro   Piano,Synthesizer,Guitar (Bass),Guitar (Electric)
Gabriel Cabezas   Cello
Buddy Ross   Keyboards,Synthesizer,Piano
Craig Weinrib   Drums
Devin Hoffman   Guitar (Bass),Guitar (Acoustic),Guitar (Electric)
Eli Teplin   Piano,Keyboards,Synthesizer
Kyle Crane   Drums
Dev Hynes   Cello,Synthesizer,Guitar (Bass),Guitar (Electric)
Andrew Aged   Guitar (Electric)
Rob Moose   Viola,Violin
Justin Vernon   Guitar (Bass),Guitar (Electric)

Technical Credits

Tom Elmhirst   Mixing
Bob McLynn   Management
Alex Sarti   Management
Daniel Nigro   Composer,Producer,Additional Production
Jack Manning   Engineer
Jonathan Daniel   Management
Lorde   Programming,Wind Chimes,Composer,Producer,Drum Programming,Creative Director
Buddy Ross   Producer,Drum Programming,Additional Production,Engineer
Jim-E Stack   Mixing,Engineer,Producer
James Harmon Stack   Composer
Eric Wrenn   Design,Art Direction
Devin Hoffman   Engineer
Fabiana Palladino   Composer,Engineer
Matt Wolach   Mixing Assistant
Heji Shin   Cover Art
Sachi DiSerafino   Additional Production
Koby Berman   Assistant Engineer
Kieran Beardmore   Mixing
Ian Gold   Engineer
Austin Christy   Assistant Engineer
Kyle Parker Smith   Assistant Engineer
William DiSerafino   Composer
Bailey Kislak   Assistant Engineer
Thistle Brown   Creative Director
Talia Chetrit   Photography
Andrew Aged   Composer
Chris Gehringer   Mastering
Will Quinnell   Mastering Assistant
Mark "Spike" Stent   Mixing Assistant
Rob Moose   String Engineer,String Arrangements