Virgin is the aftermath of the unraveling that happened in Solar Power. To understand this record fully, it's important to understand Solar Power, on which Lorde wrote about searching for identity and purpose and experiencing an existential crisis. Listening to that album, you can feel her spiraling out. Where she ends up sets the stage for Virgin, which is not a solution or a happy ending but rather the climax, or middle, of a journey through self-exploration.
The motif for this record is cutting right to the bone. Direct, open, ugly, honest, uncomfortable: these are all words that describe the language and writing on this record. Her writing style transformed from complex to, in her words, "basic." As she explained to Rolling Stone, "This is going to sound crazy, but I said to myself, 'We get it. You're smart. You don't need to telegraph it.' Whereas in the past, I'm really trying to craft these lyrics. This time I was like, 'No, be smart enough to let it be really basic. Be plain with language and see what happens.'" This kind of writing perfectly captures the ideas on the record: coming to terms with yourself and understanding that life is ugly and uncontrollable. She writes on "Hammer," "I don't need all the answers."
As a twentysomething myself, this really hit home. Young people today have grown into a society that places so much importance on having a perfect life or some twisted definition of success. There is so much value placed on personal branding and image, and on how meticulously we craft the way others perceive us. We can also recognize that she has met the world's terms of success. She writes about how that "success" (wealth, fame, status, privilege) doesn't necessarily fix your issues, a trope we have seen time and time again from artists, but Lorde doesn't spend too much time on the issues of celebrity. Instead, she turns her attention to healing and growing into what she has described as a more pure form of herself.
From heartbreak and gender identity to eating disorders and being a people pleaser, Lorde covers a lot of territory, all while tying it to the central theme of identity and healing. Despite writing about things that seem so personal and unique to her, she writes about them in a universal way that people will relate to.
Lorde also ensures this very "basic" and direct concept comes through sonically. She said in an interview with Zane Lowe that the record is like a construction site. "We barely put the walls up. We kept saying, 'load bearing pillars only'. As it pertained to the production." You can feel that throughout the record. The production is visceral and moving, yet minimal at the same time, reminiscent of her debut album Pure Heroine, which is widely recognized for its low-key production and sonic minimalism. Working with Jim-E Stack, Dev Hynes of Blood Orange, and Fabiana Palladino, she explores sounds I've never heard before. Across the record there are distorted vocals, synths, and aggressive percussion. (Unrelated, but I have to mention that I met Fabiana and she's so sweet and spoke quite highly of Virgin!) In a world where anyone can have a platform and share art, it's hard to find something so incredible and so new-sounding in pop music. Absolutely no one is on this level. Once again, her music sounds like the future.
