Lorde's 'Virgin': a document
Can an album boast 'FULL TRANSPARENCY'?
Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Virgin has broken its seal. After spending a day and a night with the fourth studio album from Lorde, I can say that the rumours were true. She is at her most potent and prosaic; merciless, open, and raw.
Following the rollout of the singles – What Was That, Hammer, and particularly Man of the Year – almost everyone expected this to be Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor’s most transparent record to date, prioritising feeling, sensation, and the self, echoing her small, indie mate’s underground effort from June 2024: a little thing called BRAT.
This isn’t to say that plain, black, Times New Roman text, understated colours and minimal artwork don’t also suit Virgin to a tee, albeit in a very different way. Instead of me giving it a go (because I can apparently find any pretentious, relevant-to-the-art reason to mask laziness), it’d be apt to defer to her description of the album, centred on emotional transparency and truth, upon its announcement:
THE COLOUR OF THE ALBUM IS CLEAR. 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.
I’M PROUD AND SCARED OF THIS ALBUM. THERE’S NOWHERE TO HIDE. I BELIEVE THAT PUTTING THE DEEPEST PARTS OF OURSELVES TO MUSIC IS WHAT SETS US FREE.
I like this a lot. She sums up her project well, on several accounts. Today, though, the bit that really catches my eye is this: ‘I was trying to make a document’.
A document is sterile, informative, black and white and – with the addition of Virgin’s x-ray cover – makes you think of a post-mortem. Album-as-document suggests a composed testimony of an event, or a series of events, that primarily seeks to present. It may give an explanation, but its first aim, I think, is demonstrative; to offer up evidence that could lead you to come to some conclusion yourself.
There is an image, then, of Virgin as a document, a Word document, ‘written in blood’, typed in Times New Roman, printed out, and placed directly in our hands. What I love most about this idea is the amount it resonates, in retrospect, with how I received the music. At some point during the first listen, I found myself armed with a red pen and a magnifying glass, drawing connections between minutia, and emerging out of the experience with an invisible essay plan, floating in the space between my headphones:
Family. Specifically, mum. Key track: ‘Favourite Daughter’ - directly addresses the (rarely imagined) pressures of a daughter to right the mother’s wrongs; doing what she couldn’t and doing it for her. Loves her deeply, and is deeply grateful, though. Frequently calling out to her mother in other songs (‘Mama, I’m so scared / Were you ever like this’ in ‘Current Affairs’; ‘Wide hips, soft lips, my mama’s trauma’ in ‘GRWM’, etc). Loving and appreciating but also being uncomfortable with unseverable blood ties
Daddy issues? Not crass enough/too difficult and subtle to call it that. Sorry Ella. Her relationship with Justin Warren and a series of older men colours this, though it’d be dangerous to just start projecting. ‘Current Affairs’ (‘He spit in my mouth like / He’s saying a prayer’) and ‘David’ (‘Oh, dark day / Was I just someone to dominate?’) both significant puzzle pieces
Emotional vulnerability as pure power. (‘I swim in waters / That would drown so many other bitches’; ‘Yesterday I lifted your body weight / I pick a song and I listen to it / Till it’s just a piece of music’; the ‘I’ve been […] / So I’m not affected’ refrain). ‘Shapeshifter’ is significant: the fact of having played all of these different roles, taken on all of these emotional burdens, that you’re invincible. It’s not that nothing affects her; it’s that she’s not affected. As is ‘If She Could See Me Now’. But this is really the whole album
The bottom line is strength; Ella’s new strength, based entirely in Ella. Gaining tangible, physical strength from emotional strength. Wielding truth
All of this occurred in my head over the course of multiple listens because, whether she knows it or not (though I highly suspect she does), Virgin is like one big, police-station pinboard, overflowing with photographs, maps, and letters, only it’s had all the connecting fabric removed. We press play: rattling the box of pins, slowly unwinding the ball of string, we’re set to crack the case.
What could there be to ‘crack’, though, about a project boasting ‘FULL TRANSPARENCY’? Maybe television crime drama, autopsies, and pragmatic analysis are not apt metaphors for self-confessed, brazenly immediate and feeling-driven art – no matter its ‘PLAIN AND UNSENTIMENTAL’ presentation.
Yet, by design, this is some sort of mystery; as fans, we do not, cannot know Lorde. Well, we can know Lorde. We cannot know Ella.
Certain Lorde listeners maybe can’t pretend they’re not doing the same thing as certain Taylor Swift listeners, piecing together bits of her music with the aim of revealing a cohesive narrative and through-line. The process might not be so specific and invasive with other artists, and not always entirely focused on personal relationships, but my red pen and I are not really doing anything different, methodologically speaking.
There’s an important distinction to make, though, and it’s based in the idea of the document.
Sometimes, Taylor Swift listeners (of which I am one, by the way) are seen seeking to explain, predict, prove, or just add fuel to the fire of an existing concept. The concept might be Swift’s relationship with Matty Healy, Swift’s relationship with Karlie Kloss, her political leanings, the expected release of a rerecord… it goes on.
My instinct with Virgin, on the other hand, was to examine the primary evidence it puts forward, (trying to be) ignorant of any preconceived thing. There is a difference between an awareness of somewhat significant, helpful context (like Ella’s documented history of relationships with older men), and approaching new art armed with biographical fact, it consciously or unconsciously influencing how you receive ideas and themes. Because I’m interested in this sort of thing, you can imagine how much fun I had with the release of and reaction to THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. The shot heard round the online world: Swift seemingly not gifting us the definitive, epic, essential tell-all on the Joe Alwyn Years.
My instincts aren’t necessarily better than the instincts of someone who approaches music in the first way – that isn’t what I’m trying to say. Earlier, I suggested documents primarily seek to present, and while they might offer explanations, this is secondary to demonstration.
This is, I think, the crux of it: Virgin is an attractive idea as an antidote to the noise around artists like Swift. I can’t tell you if Lorde’s feelings are real, or all that transparent; God knows the number of edits these lyrics might’ve been through. And, well, that number could also be heinously low, but even the most seemingly autobiographical albums and poems and novels, portraits of the self in any form, are not immediate. By nature, this is artifice. Something similar goes for when you communicate directly with anyone. Putting your thought and feeling to structured language and opening the floodgates, knowingly or unknowingly applying a filter, is not truth in its purest form. It can’t be.
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Knowing a celebrity – particularly musicians, particularly female pop artists – is addictive. You might say that people like Lorde and Charli XCX are aware of this, and look to capitalise on our impulses by baring all. You might also say that they, as artists, would likely always be committed to a free and full expression of themselves, their thoughts and feelings, ignorant of the zeitgeist. We don’t know.
I noted in my scrappy plan that the bottom line of Virgin feels like strength, Ella’s strength. What matters is that the album sounds personal, and real, and painful, and raw. Whether it’s the truth is ancillary to its aims; it needs only to convince you of itself.
And I’m convinced. I love it. Clambering out of the amniotic fluid of trying times, Lorde’s rebirth is a pleasure to witness.
(Cover image: Theo Wenner for Rolling Stone)