01/07/2025

TUESDAY | JULY 1, 2025

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L ORDE 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. How 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 do not 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 did not think it was going to be on the record. 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 is 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 earthy and there is such a purity to them and they are unmistakably machine made, but there is also something. That first sound in Hammer feels like it is coming from a very guttural place in a body. My sister said, “It sounds like it is coming from your womb.” Lowe: Because I am assuming, and maybe I am wrong, but it sounds very much like a distorted human voice searching for breath. Lorde: Totally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The palette of the album is

Lowe (left) and Lorde delve deep into the creative process behind Virgin . – PICS FROM THE ZANE LOWE SHOW

Lorde has released her fourth studio album Virgin on June 27. Hammer time again

shoes and your toe are right there, and you are like, “Well, I am right at the end already. It is not too far to go.” I was like, “Make it real big, because you are going to grow.” Becoming famous at a young age and how she views her fame now 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 do not get to album number four, so no one is asking you the question, or it is 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 cannot remember the exact phrasing of it, and you refer to Pure Heroin at one point, and there are moments where I can see you starting to identify and at least try to recognise 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 have tried to be very binary about it. When I am in the studio or when I am in America, I am an artiste. When I go home to New Zealand, I am not an artiste and I turn that part of myself off. It is impossible obviously. Solar Power , I was trying to go all the way that way. I just want to be that. I do not want to be this. I just want to be that. Let me be that. Did not feel great. And I have realised 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 is just that she is 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, I did a lot of psychedelics and really tried to break myself all the way down.

How her track Favourite Daughter came to be Lorde: Favourite Daughter , it is interesting. I feel like almost all the songs on this record, if they are sort of aimed at a person, it is 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 is also as much as it is about my mum when I am 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 has been this dynamic for the last 10, 12 years and then further back obviously of wanting so badly to be loved, to get this approval and to be the favourite. 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. Pivotal moment she reassessed her career and felt close to 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 is not the best use of this prime of your life

that you are in.” I had had a ripping problem with eating, with food and my body right through 2022. And a lot of Solar Powe r actually. I was so hungry. And, I am lucky 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 am going to eat.” Lowe: It is a mental prison. That is 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 has always been someone who was God. I have always chosen someone. It was my parents.” As it is for a lot of people. And then, I would put one person in, (then) 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. I got out of my relationship. 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. And you buy a pair of

o Lorde opens up about musical muses, transformation 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.

a c t u a l l y q u i t e simple. We use a lot of the

s a m e s t u f f o v e r a n d

Playing most of her new album for Jack Harlow Lorde: 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 is 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 am trying to make myself laugh. I am trying to make my eyebrow raise. I am trying to kind of... I do not know, just keep it feeling super alive.

Lorde hails from New Zealand.