The Metamorphosis: Lorde’s Transformation in Virgin

New Zealand alternative pop singer-songwriter Lorde’s album Solar Power (2021) faced a lot of criticism four years ago, with many fans upset with her sudden change in sound. Lorde released her debut album, Pure Heroine (2013), at just 17 years old and quickly gained attention for her introspective and relatable songwriting. She released Melodrama in 2017, which received widespread critical acclaim. In contrast to the explosive pop balladry of her beloved Melodrama (2017), Solar Power was laid back, featuring more acoustics and folk elements. However, fans were thrilled when Lorde teased “What Was That,” the lead single of her upcoming album, Virgin (2025); its themes and energy were reminiscent of Melodrama. However, since its release, Virgin has proved to be a unique establishment in Lorde’s discography. This novelty may disappoint fans who are still (understandably so) clinging onto Melodrama’s emotional dramaturgy, but with this shift in music, Lorde opens new rooms for herself to explore mature themes and fresh styles within her music. 

Virgin marks a bold reinvention in Lorde’s sonic journey, blending Melodrama’s shimmering synth-pop intensity with darker, experimental electronic textures. The album is co-produced by Jim-E Stack, who has worked with the likes of Charli xcx, Caroline Polachek, and Bon Iver, and Dan Nigro, who is known for producing for Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan. The album’s production leans heavily on layered synths, distorted bass, and ambient soundscapes, creating a gritty, metallic, and sometimes unsettling (in a good way) listening experience. Due to similar fragmented song structures, individual tracks can feel repetitive, but as a whole, the project is effective in conveying Lorde’s transformation in sound. Tracks like “Hammer” open with percussive synths and rhythmic intensity; “Shapeshifter” builds into an orchestral crescendo; and “Clearblue” strips back to a haunting vocoded a cappella. Virgin is deliberately fragmented, rough around the edges, and sonically immersive.

These aspects of Virgin, combined with the stark percussion, place Virgin in an urban environment. Most of Virgin’s promotional material was shot in New York City, a setting that intentionally parallels the album’s themes. The undeniably transformative city becomes the perfect backdrop for an album so obsessed with the transformative nature of our bodies. Thus, Virgin conveys a setting we have yet to see from Lorde. Where Melodrama burned neon and Solar Power shimmered gold, Virgin hums with steel, smoke, and shadow.   

Thematically, Virgin confronts questions of gender, fertility, womanhood, and autonomy with bluntness absent from Lorde’s previous records. Like the album’s striking cover art—a cloudy-blue X-ray of Lorde’s pelvis, IUD included—Virgin provides glimpses of the woman behind the microphone. The idea of gender, specifically gender as a fluid, changing thing, is a major idea that Lorde tackles throughout the album. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Lorde reflected on a conversation she had with Chappell Roan. Roan asked her if she identified as non-binary, and Lorde responded, “I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.” On “Hammer,” she reiterates this, singing, “I burn and I sing and I scheme and I dance / Some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man.” Lorde’s transformation, which comes with her simply growing up, has affected not only her musical sound but the way she thinks of herself, and thus her expression.

Lorde also digs into her generational trauma on Virgin, a theme that, although present across her discography (Lorde has mentioned her mother on Melodrama’s “Writer in the Dark” and Solar Power’s “Oceanic Feeling”), has never been confronted head-on. On the track “Favourite Daughter,” Lorde links her people-pleasing tendencies back to her mother, singing, “Cause I’m an actress, all of the medals I won for ya / Panic attack just to be your favorite daughter.” On “GRWM,” a title which subverts the viral term “get ready with me” to instead mean “grown woman,” Lorde grapples with the “mama’s trauma” she holds in her body. Even on lovesick tracks like “Current Affairs,” Lorde still invokes her mother, emphasizing the deep, complex, and emotional relationships women have with their matriarchal figures. Virgin strips away metaphor in favor of directness. Songs like “Clearblue” and “Broken Glass” approach sensitive subjects like fertility, eating disorders, and body image, all without hiding behind poetic distance. 

This new style of more sexually liberal songwriting marks yet another one of Lorde’s transformations in Virgin. The lyrics depart from the allegorical lens of Solar Power and the theatricality of Melodrama. Now, working without Jack Antonoff, Lorde’s collaborator on the previous two LPs, her songwriting is more ambiguous, sifting through the romantic, sexual, and professional entanglements that have shaped her. The album may not be as instantly relatable as past works, but it presents Lorde at her most vulnerable state. Not all of the album lands very well, though; much of Virgin feels more subdued than the peak moments of Lorde’s catalog. Lyrics like “There’s broken blood in me, it passed to my mother from her mother down to me” on “Clearblue” are much more direct than the metaphorical style Lorde has used on previous projects. Parts of even extremely emotional songs like “Broken Glass” feel cheapened by lyrics like “Lose my freak about that? / Huh, all of the above.” While Virgin falls short compared to the emotional lyricism of Melodrama, it is able to offer adult hindsight rather than raw, youthful eruption.

Taken as a continuation of her artistic trajectory, Lorde’s four albums display the growing pains that come with metamorphosing into adulthood. Her newest addition, Virgin, is a daring leap into true honesty and experimentation that we haven’t seen before from Lorde. While the album’s somewhat strange sound and unambiguous lyricism may be a letdown to Lorde supporters who wish for her to relive 2017 forever, Virgin proves that when artists are able to embrace discomfort and transformation, they end up creating a truly radical and unique record.