Lorde is finally back, as Virgin, the New Zealand superstar’s first album in nearly four years, officially released on Friday.
Lorde preceded the new album with the singles “What Was That,” “Man of the Year,” and “Hammer,” the latter of which also serves as Virgin’s opening track. So far, “What Was That” has been the most popular song, charting at 36 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and amassing over 80 million streams on Spotify. The prospect of new music has helped boost her catalog as well, as “Ribs,” her much-beloved track from debut album Pure Heroine, finally charted on the Hot 100 back in May after her viral, chaotic pop-up in Washington Square Park back in April.
Virgin follows Lorde’s 2021 Solar Power, which represented a bit of a sonic and aesthetic departure from the synth-pop she’d been associated with. Solar Power was more divisive among fans and critics and failed to meet the commercial heights of Pure Heroine or her lauded sophomore album Melodrama. For Virgin, Lorde worked mostly with producer and co-writer Jim-E Stack, who also produced Bon Iver’s latest album Sable, Fable. Other contributors on the album include Dan Nigro, producer for Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo, and Buddy Ross, whose credits include tracks for Vampire Weekend, Haim and Frank Ocean among others.
Lorde sat down with Zane Lowe for an interview that aired Thursday ahead of Virgin’s release, giving a wide-ranging conversation touching on everything from recording “Hammer” to giving an early peak at the album to Jack Harlow, to addressing becoming a star as a teenager.
” I think for a long time I’ve tried to be very binary about it,” Lorde told Lowe. “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.”
Lorde will be taking her new album on the road later in the fall for the Ultrasound World Tour, which is shaping up to be one of the hottest shows of the year as nearly every date has already sold out. The tour will kick off at the Moody Center in Austin on September 17th.