After nearly four years of near silence, Lorde is back—and she’s bleeding truth. The two-time Grammy winner has officially announced her fourth studio album, Virgin, set for release on June 27. With cover art that’s just as provocative as its title—a moody X-ray of a pelvis adorned with a zipper, belt buckle, and the ghostly outline of an IUD—Virgin isn’t whispering its message. It’s shouting. Described by Lorde as “plain and unsentimental,” this album is her rawest yet—a sonic rebirth wrapped in guts, grace, and grit. It’s bold. It’s unfiltered. It’s so very Lorde.
Mark Your Calendar
Yes, the wait is nearly over.
Virgin arrives on Friday, June 27, 2025—her first full-length project since 2021’s breezy, sun-soaked Solar Power. Fans are already calling this the beginning of Lorde Summer, and honestly, we agree.
The Lead Single
Anchoring the album is the lead single “What Was That”—a melancholic yet euphoric track that Lorde calls “the music of my rebirth.”
Co-produced by Lorde and Jim-E Stack (with a production cameo by Dan Nigro, fresh off his Grammy win), this track doesn’t tiptoe into your ears—it walks in barefoot, with stories to tell. It made its surprise debut on April 22 at an impromptu fan event in New York’s Washington Square Park, where Lorde—yep, in the flesh—danced with fans and played the song over speakers. Guerrilla-style pop royalty.
The track stormed straight to #1 on Spotify U.S., making it her first chart-topper there since Royals.
Unzipping the Virgin Cover
The cover art? A moment. A blue-tinted pelvic X-ray featuring a belt buckle, a central zipper, and the faint silhouette of an IUD. It’s clinical. It’s personal. It’s loaded.
The zipper feels like an invitation—or a warning. The IUD? A gutsy nod to reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. By literally stripping away her face and offering only an internal portrait, Lorde invites us to see her differently: not as a pop icon, but as a body, a story, a symbol. Feminine, complicated, unflinching.
Vulnerability, Power & Rebirth
With Virgin, Lorde isn’t hiding behind metaphor anymore. This is not Melodrama’s heartbreak diary or Solar Power’s beach retreat. This is an excavation. A laying bare.
She’s confronting body image, sexuality, femininity, and control. She’s embracing the mess, the mystery, and the contradictions.
Much of this clarity came after her remix of Girl, So Confusing with Charli XCX—where she publicly tackled body dysmorphia and industry anxiety. That collaboration opened a floodgate. As she told BBC Radio 1, “Meeting Charli in that place of rugged vulnerability made me realize people are listening—and they care.”
Fan Events, TikTok Teasers & Chart Takeovers
Lorde’s rollout strategy? Pure chaos energy, in the best way.
It all began with that pop-up fan event in New York’s Washington Square Park, complete with impromptu dancing, speaker setups, and phone footage that later made it into the official music video. Permit drama? Sure. But Lorde being Lorde, she powered through.
The release of the cover art on Instagram—captioned “100% written in blood”—blew up across platforms, igniting conversations about feminine agency, identity, and pain.
On TikTok, teasers for “What Was That” sparked viral excitement, helping the track skyrocket to streaming success. And her surprise Coachella duet with Charli XCX? Sealed the deal: Lorde is back in the cultural bloodstream.
Lorde: So, What Is This Album?
With Virgin, Lorde isn’t just releasing an album—she’s cracking open her chest. This is the work of an artist who’s wrestled with silence, stepped back from the spotlight, and emerged with a howl of honesty.
Blending the introspection of Pure Heroine, the ache of Melodrama, and the warmth of Solar Power, Virgin dares to be both clinical and spiritual, bold and bruised. It’s Lorde in full form—fierce, strange, and unafraid to get messy.
With collaborators like Dan Nigro, Dev Hynes, and Jim-E Stack, the production is intimate but not shy. It asks you to listen. And then—really listen.
