Lorde’s Defiant Phase – New Statesman

After a four-year hiatus, Lorde has made her return to the charts. It’s music with a touch of recession. At the end of April, she unveiled a breakup anthem titled “What Was That”.With its soaring structure, metallic production, and handheld music video, the track marks a distinct shift from the New Age vibe of her last album, steering back towards the final days of the DIY “indie sleaze” era from which she originally emerged. This week, she followed it up with “Man of the Year”,a gender-bending ballad about reconnecting with your ex. Much like “What Was That,” its video is a nostalgic nod to several 2013 influences: a hint of the original “Royals” video, an echo of Lars von Trier’s dimly-lit Nymphomaniac films, and a symbolic nod to the Free the Nipple movement via some breast tape.

This tendency towards nostalgia might be a strategy to draw fans back to the essence of Lorde. However, the overall rollout of the album appears darker and more provocative. Titled Virgin, a press release boldly claims it will be “100% WRITTEN IN BLOOD;” the album art features an ultrasound image of a female pelvis with an IUD. The all-caps mission statement bears a striking resemblance to that of Charli XCX’s Brat, released last summer; while Charli declared, “THE ARTWORK WILL BE… OBNOXIOUS, ARROGANT AND BOLD… WE MUST CULTIVATE DESIRE, CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION,” Lorde proclaims, “THE COLOUR OF THE ALBUM IS CLEAR… FULL TRANSPARENCY… MY FEMININITY… RAW, PRIMAL, INNOCENT, ELEGANT.”

Brat propelled Charli XCX into the mainstream, while simultaneously providing Lorde a path back to indie-pop recognition. The Brat track “Girl, So Confusing”delved into the emotional aftermath of a decade-long, unresolved feud between the two singers, who rose to fame as contemporaries and rivals in the alt-pop scene. The cultural impact of the track seemed preordained: “One day we might make some music / The Internet would go crazy.” And indeed, the internet did; the blend of confessional songwriting and pop culture references allowed everyone to feel part of the narrative.

Any artist can be forgiven for aiming to create their own Brat moment, to define the musical landscape of the year, and to bask in notable commercial success. It’s plausible that in 2025, Lorde has even more to prove than Charli had in 2024.

Lorde, a savvy teenager, released an era-defining alt-pop album, largely retreated from the spotlight, and returned with another. Her brand revolved around distance—both from her audience and her personal connections. At just 16 during the release of Royals, the child prodigy image gave her an enduring mystique (conspiracy theorists speculated she was actually 45). She became known for sidestepping typical pop star expectations, such as tight choreography and hyper-sexualized photoshoots. Her lyrics thrived on moral ambiguity,

However, that aura dissipated with the 2021 release of her third album, Solar Power. The music videos showcased her first use of bright daylight, backup dancers, and full-body bikini shots; the sound was leisurely, folky, and uninspiring. She garnered genuine sexual provocation for just a moment on the album cover, which featured a camera placed beneath her bare legs. With Solar Power, she seemed to distance herself from her core persona. Now, with Virgin, she’s attempting to reclaim it, alongside the recognition and critical acclaim missing from her recent work.

This task won’t be straightforward. Lorde’s nipple-taping and multifaceted femininity are clearly intended to provoke, but as we’ve moved past the 2010s—the last time Lorde was a pop icon—this provocation lands less impactfully. Shock value becomes meaningless without a stable audience to provoke, especially when relying on an unpredictable algorithm in lieu of the dominant narratives of mainstream media. The pitfalls of her fluctuating references and stylistic callbacks pose challenges for a modern musician: the decline of a singular cultural moment means the collapse of the celebrity rebrand. Today’s pop music requires a consistent visual identity, arriving devoid of a recognizable face; catchy song snippets may catch on within fleeting social media videos but are soon forgotten.

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Instead, we’ve seen versions of Lorde: the theatrical adolescent from Melodrama and Pure Heroine. Then Lorde, the sun deity, under the visual themes of Solar Power. Now, she’s channeling her teenage self again, with an added gender-fluid twist.

There are still certain pop personae that genuinely originate from the SoundCloud wilderness; they’re meant to transcend commercial norms. Such artists can falter if they come across as overly self-aware, reference too much, or exhibit any signs of calculated marketing. Lorde falls into this category. Her existing mythos restricts her from deliberately moving forward or backward through time; her appearance on Brat saw her diverging from her past for the first time, stepping into a distinct realm with other leftfield pop artists. It feels off to watch her leverage recent internet trends, her past career, or even the patchwork references that frame Solar Power. She’s meant to be a visionary, capable of forecasting what lies ahead.

[See more: Wes Anderson’s sense of an ending]