The time has come for Lorde’s ferociously dedicated fans to be fed, because the Grammy winner is officially dropping her fourth album, Virgin, on June 27. Her bombastic dancefloor confessional, “What Was That,” ushered in a new era that calls back to her Melodrama but looks forward to greater heights. The album’s cover art is an X-ray of a woman’s pelvis (most likely, her own) with a visible zipper, belt, and IUD in the scanned image.
On her website, Lorde explained her intention behind the introspective cover. “The colour of the album is clear,” she wrote. “Like bathwater, windows, ice, spit. Full transparency. The language is plain and unsentimental. The sounds are the same wherever possible. I was trying to see myself, all the way through. I was trying to make a document that reflected my femininity: Raw, primal, innocent, elegant, openhearted, spiritual, masc.”
She also shared that the album was “written in blood,” alluding to the rawness of her creative process. As for the title of her highly anticipated return to pop, Lorde posted a series of screenshots on her Instagram Stories explaining why she called her album Virgin. Spoiler alert: it has less to do with a lack of sexual experience and more to do with independence.
One of the slides calls back to the origin of the word itself, but clarifies that it can relate to “a man-woman or androgynous person.” At one point, the text added that “a virgin has the whole potential of the total original human being,” which Lorde seemingly said “sounds very independent” to her.
During an interview with BBC Radio 1, the singer-songwriter also revealed how she feels about putting out a new body of work after four years. “I feel totally amazing and just open and excited for people to hear this. I can’t believe that this thing is coming out,” she gushed.
“I wrote this from the perspective of, ‘Well I could never say that,’ and I put off dealing with that. I was like, ‘This is for future Ella to deal with,’” she added, referring to herself by her real name. “And now, the day’s almost here, and future Ella’s going to have to put all these things out into the world.”
TL;DR: we have survived the Lorde drought, and we’re so ready to experience Ella’s “things.”
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