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On Thursday, New Zealand pop sensation Lorde released “Man of the Year,” the second single from her upcoming album, Virgin, accompanied by an emotionally charged music video. This song is her tribute to her journey of gender exploration; when she teased it on Instagram, she referred to it as “an offering from really deep inside me” and “the song I’m proudest of on Virgin.”
For devoted GQ readers, the song’s title may sound familiar: Since 1996, this magazine has held its annual Men of the Year party (often called “MOTY”) to celebrate its year-end print issue, which honors those entertainers, athletes, designers, and others who shaped the culture that year. In a recent interview with the Australian radio show Triple J, Lorde mentioned that she began writing the song two years ago, the day after attending GQ’s Men of the Year event in Los Angeles.
On November 16, 2023, a bleach-blonde Lorde graced the MOTY red carpet outside the Chateau Marmont in a stunning emerald-green Acne Studios gown featuring a midriff cutout. It had been over two years since she released her third album, Solar Power—a mid-pandemic gem celebrating the blissful, albeit privileged, joys of connecting with nature and relaxing at the nail salon. She attended the event as a guest; the honorees that year included Jacob Elordi, Kim Kardashian, Travis Scott, and Tom Ford. According to the radio interview, the party stirred up fresh feelings about her own identity and self-expression.
“It was amusing because I had been experiencing this growing expansiveness of gender for a while, and this was my first event in ages. I wore a sort of ‘hot girl’ dress and felt so unlike myself,” Lorde shared. “It served as a unique marker, especially at an event honoring all these fantastic guys. I thought, ‘Oh, I’m one of those guys, at times, when I want to be. And I realized, ‘Hmm, maybe the hot-girl dress isn’t the best choice for this occasion.’”
Feeling “somewhat hungover” in the studio the next day, she began crafting a song about “how I’m the Man of the Year, for me.” (On the same day, November 17, she shared a Getty-watermarked image from the event captioned, “Some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man.”) The track, which she co-wrote with producer Jim-E Stack, captures her journey of experiencing her gender “expand and shift, breaking out in a way that was both amazing and daunting.”
In a recent Rolling Stone profile, she recounted a conversation with fellow artist Chappell Roan: “She asked, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’ I replied, ‘I’m a woman except on the days when I’m a man.’ I realize that’s not a very clear answer, but a part of me resists the urge to box it in.” The music video for “Man of the Year” appears to celebrate the conflicting ideas of boundaries and freedom. It starts with Lorde seated on a chair, removing her white T-shirt and binding her chest with duct tape, enabling her to move freely across a spacious studio filled with dirt. “I didn’t think he’d show up / Let’s hear it for the man of the year,” she sings.
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