With Virgin dropping June 26, Lorde sat down with Zane Lowe for a conversation about the making of the album and the lessons that came with it.
Reflecting on what it’s been like to grow up in the spotlight, she opened up about how she’s struggled with fame since Pure Heroine put her on the map. “I think for a long time I’ve tried to be very binary about it,” she said. “When I’m in the studio or when I’m in America, I’m an artist. When I go home to New Zealand, I’m not an artist, and I turn that part of myself off. It’s impossible, obviously.”
That push and pull shaped her earlier albums — she says Solar Power “didn’t feel great” — but Virgin marks a shift toward making “the purest version of me” known to the world. “It's just that she's maybe in a garden experiencing ego death in the middle of the night on a heroic dose,” she said. “[An] inextricable part of this album is that, yeah, I did a lot of psychedelics and really tried to break myself all the way down.”
Much like the album’s see-through vinyl, Virgin promises Lorde at her most transparent yet.
