NEWS
Lorde on new album 'Virgin': "My sister said, 'It sounds like it's coming from your womb'"
26 June 2025
Lorde sits down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to reflect on her upcoming fourth studio album, 'Virgin'. In the wide-ranging conversation, the two discuss the inspirations behind the new music, the moment Lorde reassessed her career, what it was like becoming famous as a teenager, and more.
Lorde tells Apple Music about how her track "Hammer" came together
Lorde: It was actually late in 2023. We wrote a version of it. I had just come off my birth control and I could not believe how I was feeling. There was just this, everything was pure kind of possibility. I just felt like tapped into this kind of source of energy that was crazy. And I was in New York, walking around and I don't know, tweaking out and it was amazing. It was so cool. It was spring '24 when we... So we made it, we sort of put it aside, we didn't think it was going to be on the record. It was spring '24. Jimmy linked up with Buddy Ross who sort of did a whole bunch of different different stuff for it. Jimmy kind of wrangled this version together. He played it to me on FaceTime and I was like, "Wait, Ham is back." It's back on the album. And from there I feel like actually that was a really cool kind of piece of the blueprint just sonically. I just tried to keep it as raw and pure as possible. Buddy's sounds are so earthy and there's such a purity to them and they're unmistakably machine made, but there's also something... That first sound in "Hammer" feels like it's coming from a very guttural place in a body. My sister said, "It sounds like it's coming from your womb."
Zane Lowe: Because I'm assuming, and maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds very much like a distorted human voice searching for breath.
Lorde: Totally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I really thought of all the kind of... The palette of the album is actually quite simple. We use a lot of the same stuff over and over. He thought of all the sounds we chose, which we chose so carefully as my voices, these machines are singing and crying and talking, or laughing, or whatever in the same way that we do.
Lorde tells Apple Music about playing most of her new album for Jack Harlow
Jack Harlow was working on Electric Lady when we were there towards the end of the record and somehow ended up getting most of the album played to him. It was a very funny, cool link. He's such a sweetheart. But he was like, "Your bars are..." He was like, "These are bars." I was like, "Your words, not mine." But it just is this sort of rolling cadence and physicality and within that I'm trying to make myself laugh. I'm trying to make my eyebrow raise. I'm trying to kind of... I don't know, just keep it feeling super alive.
Lorde tells Apple Music about how her track "Favorite Daughter" came to be
"Favorite Daughter", it's interesting. I feel like almost all the songs on this record, if they're sort of aimed at a person, it's a composite of people and moments that have kind of brought up a certain feeling for me. So that song is about my relationship with my mom, who is the reason that I do everything that I do, she is the blueprint for me. But, it's also as much as it's about my mom when I'm saying, "All the medals I won for you breaking my back to be your favourite daughter," I felt that I was also singing to an audience. There's been this dynamic for the last 10, 12 years and then further back obviously of wanting so badly to be loved and to get this approval and to be the favorite. And it was really moving to me how, even as I was sort of singing through this song about my foremost idol and the person who I think is the most amazing in the world, I was also singing about kind of what a crazy thing it is to have happened to you what had happened to me at 16, sort of just all of a sudden be another plane, another show, another plane, another show.
Lorde tells Apple Music about the pivotal moment she reassessed her career and felt close to a breaking point
Lorde: I think it was sometime around the end of 2022, the start of 2023, and all these different things converged, these things that had been building, it felt like, my whole life. Definitely my whole adult life. I had this deep moment of existential reassessment of my role. I was like, "Why am I in this role? What is the way that I want to be in that feels right to me and healthy to me?" Because I tried this refusal on 'Solar Power,’ and there was something missing. I felt those songs touch my skin and not hook my guts. I was like, "This isn't the best use of this prime of your life that you're in."
I had had a ripping problem with eating, with food and my body right through 2022. And a lot of 'Solar Power' actually. I was so hungry. And, I'm lucky that I was able to move through that. But, it just felt like a breaking point. I remember waking up one day and being like, "I cannot do this anymore. I cannot go to bed thinking about everything I ate that day and waking up worrying about all the shit I'm going to eat."
Zane Lowe: It's a mental prison. That's just the height of torture.
Lorde: Completely robbed me of all of my life force and creativity. The most boring time of my life. And then, I felt this thing that I was 25 and I was like, "Hang on. There's always been someone who was God. I've always chosen someone. It was my parents." As it is for a lot of people. And then, I would put one person in, another person, another person, usually men, but not always. And it was this thing that I would do to protect myself from having to be the one who had the answers about what my life was meant to be. And, I really had the sense at the start of 2023 that I had to cut a whole lot of cords, be alone, see what power grew in me to be able to be in my life the way I need to be in my life.
And it was rugged. And I got out of my relationship. And I made big changes across the board. I went to London to try and meet people to work with. I started working with Fabiana, working with a woman, and that space felt really incredible and restorative. So I had this real year of trying to find a more sustainable connection to this power that is in me. With this album the whole time, I keep saying, bigger toe box, bigger toe box. And you buy a pair of shoes and your toe's right there, and you're like, "Well, I'm right at the end already. It's not too far to go." I was like, "Make it real big, because you're going to grow."
Lorde tells Apple Music about becoming famous at a young age and how she views her fame now
Zane Lowe: This idea of fame at a young age though is something that you and only a few people can come out the other side of and make great music and reflect on it, at times you don't get to album number four, so no one's asking you the question, or it's worse. And so looking back on it, and there were reflections toward yourself, there are moments when you say the innocence of a teen, teenage innocence, or I can't remember the exact phrasing of it, and you refer to 'Pure Heroin' at one point, and there's moments where I can see you starting to identify and at least try to recognize that person again. What has that experience been like looking back on it now, and how have you got it into a place of understanding what you went through?
Lorde: I think for a long time I've tried to be very binary about it. 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. 'Solar Power,’ I was trying to go all the way that way. I just want to be that. I don't want to be this. I just want to be that. Let me be that. Didn't feel great. And I've realized now, and, again, this speaks to the trying to find this purest version of yourself, the purest version of me is famous out in 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. I definitely had the sense with this, because inextricable part of this album is that, yeah, I did a lot of psychedelics and really tried to break myself all the way down.
Lorde tells Apple Music about how her track "Hammer" came together
Lorde: It was actually late in 2023. We wrote a version of it. I had just come off my birth control and I could not believe how I was feeling. There was just this, everything was pure kind of possibility. I just felt like tapped into this kind of source of energy that was crazy. And I was in New York, walking around and I don't know, tweaking out and it was amazing. It was so cool. It was spring '24 when we... So we made it, we sort of put it aside, we didn't think it was going to be on the record. It was spring '24. Jimmy linked up with Buddy Ross who sort of did a whole bunch of different different stuff for it. Jimmy kind of wrangled this version together. He played it to me on FaceTime and I was like, "Wait, Ham is back." It's back on the album. And from there I feel like actually that was a really cool kind of piece of the blueprint just sonically. I just tried to keep it as raw and pure as possible. Buddy's sounds are so earthy and there's such a purity to them and they're unmistakably machine made, but there's also something... That first sound in "Hammer" feels like it's coming from a very guttural place in a body. My sister said, "It sounds like it's coming from your womb."
Zane Lowe: Because I'm assuming, and maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds very much like a distorted human voice searching for breath.
Lorde: Totally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I really thought of all the kind of... The palette of the album is actually quite simple. We use a lot of the same stuff over and over. He thought of all the sounds we chose, which we chose so carefully as my voices, these machines are singing and crying and talking, or laughing, or whatever in the same way that we do.
Lorde tells Apple Music about playing most of her new album for Jack Harlow
Jack Harlow was working on Electric Lady when we were there towards the end of the record and somehow ended up getting most of the album played to him. It was a very funny, cool link. He's such a sweetheart. But he was like, "Your bars are..." He was like, "These are bars." I was like, "Your words, not mine." But it just is this sort of rolling cadence and physicality and within that I'm trying to make myself laugh. I'm trying to make my eyebrow raise. I'm trying to kind of... I don't know, just keep it feeling super alive.
Lorde tells Apple Music about how her track "Favorite Daughter" came to be
"Favorite Daughter", it's interesting. I feel like almost all the songs on this record, if they're sort of aimed at a person, it's a composite of people and moments that have kind of brought up a certain feeling for me. So that song is about my relationship with my mom, who is the reason that I do everything that I do, she is the blueprint for me. But, it's also as much as it's about my mom when I'm saying, "All the medals I won for you breaking my back to be your favourite daughter," I felt that I was also singing to an audience. There's been this dynamic for the last 10, 12 years and then further back obviously of wanting so badly to be loved and to get this approval and to be the favorite. And it was really moving to me how, even as I was sort of singing through this song about my foremost idol and the person who I think is the most amazing in the world, I was also singing about kind of what a crazy thing it is to have happened to you what had happened to me at 16, sort of just all of a sudden be another plane, another show, another plane, another show.
Lorde tells Apple Music about the pivotal moment she reassessed her career and felt close to a breaking point
Lorde: I think it was sometime around the end of 2022, the start of 2023, and all these different things converged, these things that had been building, it felt like, my whole life. Definitely my whole adult life. I had this deep moment of existential reassessment of my role. I was like, "Why am I in this role? What is the way that I want to be in that feels right to me and healthy to me?" Because I tried this refusal on 'Solar Power,’ and there was something missing. I felt those songs touch my skin and not hook my guts. I was like, "This isn't the best use of this prime of your life that you're in."
I had had a ripping problem with eating, with food and my body right through 2022. And a lot of 'Solar Power' actually. I was so hungry. And, I'm lucky that I was able to move through that. But, it just felt like a breaking point. I remember waking up one day and being like, "I cannot do this anymore. I cannot go to bed thinking about everything I ate that day and waking up worrying about all the shit I'm going to eat."
Zane Lowe: It's a mental prison. That's just the height of torture.
Lorde: Completely robbed me of all of my life force and creativity. The most boring time of my life. And then, I felt this thing that I was 25 and I was like, "Hang on. There's always been someone who was God. I've always chosen someone. It was my parents." As it is for a lot of people. And then, I would put one person in, another person, another person, usually men, but not always. And it was this thing that I would do to protect myself from having to be the one who had the answers about what my life was meant to be. And, I really had the sense at the start of 2023 that I had to cut a whole lot of cords, be alone, see what power grew in me to be able to be in my life the way I need to be in my life.
And it was rugged. And I got out of my relationship. And I made big changes across the board. I went to London to try and meet people to work with. I started working with Fabiana, working with a woman, and that space felt really incredible and restorative. So I had this real year of trying to find a more sustainable connection to this power that is in me. With this album the whole time, I keep saying, bigger toe box, bigger toe box. And you buy a pair of shoes and your toe's right there, and you're like, "Well, I'm right at the end already. It's not too far to go." I was like, "Make it real big, because you're going to grow."
Lorde tells Apple Music about becoming famous at a young age and how she views her fame now
Zane Lowe: This idea of fame at a young age though is something that you and only a few people can come out the other side of and make great music and reflect on it, at times you don't get to album number four, so no one's asking you the question, or it's worse. And so looking back on it, and there were reflections toward yourself, there are moments when you say the innocence of a teen, teenage innocence, or I can't remember the exact phrasing of it, and you refer to 'Pure Heroin' at one point, and there's moments where I can see you starting to identify and at least try to recognize that person again. What has that experience been like looking back on it now, and how have you got it into a place of understanding what you went through?
Lorde: I think for a long time I've tried to be very binary about it. 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. 'Solar Power,’ I was trying to go all the way that way. I just want to be that. I don't want to be this. I just want to be that. Let me be that. Didn't feel great. And I've realized now, and, again, this speaks to the trying to find this purest version of yourself, the purest version of me is famous out in 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. I definitely had the sense with this, because inextricable part of this album is that, yeah, I did a lot of psychedelics and really tried to break myself all the way down.
