Album Review: Virgin, by Lorde

It has been Lorde’s misfortunate that her most readily accessible music came at the beginning of her career, with the Love Club Ep (future review forthcoming?) and her debut album Pure Heroine, which spawned the massive hits “Royals” and “Team.” Since then, as I have written about elsewhere, her sales have declined dramatically and the focus of her music has turned much more inward, so that instead of speaking about the populist desires of people in small town New Zealand (or other places), she came to sing about getting stoned at the nail salon or enjoying the decadence of fellow leftists interested in solar power. Going into this particular album, I have not yet listened to any of the songs that have been released so far, but I am not optimistic that this album is the turnaround that would bring her pop success once again even on the level of the excellent “Green Light” or “Yellow Flicker Beat,” much less her best known material, but I am willing to give it a fair chance. One reason for my concern is that Lorde has bungled her promotion for this album by making some particularly foolish comments about her supposed “gender identity” and another reason is that the album title shows one of the most noted sex-positive feminists in contemporary pop music (though one thinks that this shouldn’t be a rare category from their behavior) calling herself a virgin, which seems a bit off. How does the music sound, though? Is it a trainwreck or does it come off as at least decent? Let’s find out.

The album begins with “Hammer,” which itself begins with a distorted intro and lyrics that point to intimacy as well as the commonplace observation that when you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail, including a potential partner (?). There are some genuinely beautiful touches to the instrumentation here, but also some off-putting elements to the song. “What Was That” was a pre-release single that had some success on the Hot 100, and it harkens back to the minimalist production of Lorde’s early music, continuing the theme of confusion resulting from romantic melodrama. “Shapeshifter” comes next, with more minimal production, pointing to the singer’s belief in herself as having a somewhat fluid identity. “Man Of The Year,” another pre-album single, takes the minimal production to its logical conclusion to near absent levels at the beginning of the song as Lorde singspeaks her lyrics about being broken and confused by a bad relationship. Fortunately, things pick up afterwards, but unfortunately the instrumentation is distorted and off-putting even when it shows up. “Favorite Daughter” at least has a catchy mid-tempo beat that shows Lorde struggling with the parasocial nature of being a performing artist as well as her own imposter syndrome. It is a standout track here. “Current Affairs” starts with more minimalistic production with some interesting spoken word elements as well as Lorde confessing to being overwhelmed and blaming her feelings on the state of the world. “Clearblue” finds Lorde again starting over a nearly absent instrumental background with distorted vocals that hint to freedom but also to worries about pregnancy and the history of broken family background and personal history. “GRWM” finds Lorde struggling with what it means to be a grown woman over an ominous minimal beat but at least the beat has an interesting rhythm and the image of Lorde as a grown woman in a baby tee is not entirely displeasing and the song becomes prettier as it goes on. “Broken Glass” finds Lorde starting over a minimal techno beat that finds Lorde struggling to admit her weakness and folly and the price she has paid for it. “If She Could See Me Now” finds Lorde viewing herself as a gifted mystic wanting someone else to feel envious of her over a minimal but driving beat, a confident mood that is somewhat undercut by the rest of the album as a whole. Still, it’s a catchy song with lovely instrumental touches. “David” features Lorde singing with lots of pauses over negative spaces in the production about someone she cares deeply about, reaching out for love and intimacy with a strong sense of longing and even regret.

I’m not sure what I expected from this album, but I have to say it was both better than I expected but also not nearly as exciting as I would have hoped. It seems as if the lesson that Lorde learned from the failure of Solar Power was mixed, positive in the sense that nothing here is nearly as self-indulgent as that album had to offer, but negative in the sense that these songs are almost all austerely produced with almost nothing interesting instrumentally to offer. This forces attention on the lyrics, which find Lorde in a reflective and somewhat downbeat mood, reflecting on a poor emotional state as well as the wreckage of her romantic relationships and her desire for a fresh start. There is nothing here nearly as catchy as her best work but the best songs on this album find her in a place where she is engaging in recording this album as something akin to musical therapy. Perhaps nothing here will be a big hit for her–and she has not even released the catchiest and most enjoyable songs on offer here, namely “Favorite Daughter,” “GRWM,” and “If She Could See Me Now,” as singles, but if this album is something that Lorde needed to get out of her system to make an album that was beautiful and also avoided indulgent AWFL naval gazing, it will have been a good thing.