Did Lorde save the Summer? (Album Review)

Lorde's Virgin has to be the most introspective album she has ever written. While songs like Ribs or Team were about these collective experiences, laughing with your friends until your ribs hurt, or growing up in small cities that you'll never see on the movie screen, Virgin turns that lens inwards. It is not pure heroin. It is pure Ella. Discussing how she overcame her eating disorder, discovering her sexuality and gender expression, generational trauma, and her relationship with her mother. These songs feel like pages torn from a diary. And these themes are emotional, raw, and uncomfortable. But that is what makes them so deeply human. Documenting that trauma and those emotions, because they are what made her into the person that she is today. And how that experience is reflected back onto you as the listener. Thinking about those moments in your life that hurt you or healed you, and set you on the path. The path that you were meant to be on. In this week's episode of Nikki and I, we're going to review Lorde's brand new album, Virgin, because I have been very much awaiting this. I'm a huge Lorde fan. So I was so excited that she's been releasing music. It's been a minute. And I think this album is so different than anything that she's ever written. So with that, welcome back to Nikki and I. I'm your host, Nikki Reardon. And I'm so excited to be talking about Lorde this week and doing a bit of an album review. I am always like skeptical about doing album reviews because I feel like, a lot of like my favorite moments and like falling in love with the song is never upon first listen. I kind of like think about it or like feel it and like hear it in the car while I'm driving. You know what I mean? Like I get into it. But a few housekeeping items. We hit 100,000 subscribers. Woo! I could not be more excited. Thank you all. Thank you so much. We hit it in under a year. It would have been, I think we hit it on June 29th and July 1st would have been exactly one. Year since I started this channel. So thank you. And my birthday is July 3rd. So it was like the best birthday present I could have ever asked for. Um, so thank you all for being here. I love doing this. Um, it brings me literally so much joy. It's just so fun to talk about like music and things I'm interested in all the time. So if you haven't, don't forget to subscribe to the channel. Um, and now our next goal is getting our podcast listeners up. We have 13,000 listeners on Spotify and I think like 2000 on Apple music. So, Hey, check it. Check it out. You can listen to us on your car ride to work, you know, at the gym, whatever you want, whatever it's easier for you. Um, and if you're listening there now, can be sure to give us a five-star rating. So with that, let's dive into talking about Lord. I actually want to start with talking about the album cover itself, because I think it's very interesting. I haven't seen enough people really analyzing it. You know, it is literally a X-ray photo of her pelvis. Um, you can even see like her, the zipper of her pants and a belt buckle, and I think it's meant to symbolize these themes of gender identity. And I love how revealing the album cover is, but it's not at all sexual. Like it is quite literally transparent. You are seeing through her, you are seeing inside of her as deep as you can possibly go. You can literally see her IUD in the photo, which is a political statement in itself, especially right now, which I think is very cool. And I think it really builds the theme that this album is all about transparency and introspection. It's sort of like a portrait. Of herself, a portrait of these emotions and experiences and a lot of the trauma that we're going to talk about and things she's had to overcome, um, that she wrote about through, through this album. Um, and I think this idea of like a physical transparent photo is so cool. An X-ray you like, you are literally seeing directly into her and, and, you know, choosing that area of like her pelvis region. When a lot of this. Themes of this album talk about like what it means to be a woman and her ideas of femininity and masculinity and, and not understanding her own gender and sexual orientation. I actually think it's like such a powerful, um, album cover, even the album title Virgin itself. The dictionary definition is literally like not yet touched, used or exploited. Um, and I think like, again, that, that feeling of newness is what it is, that feeling of like, I am now trying to start over again from ground zero, from this new state, this new emotional state after going through. All these experiences, this is the person I have come out as on the other side. Um, that's really, I think like what the album title meant to me. And, and one of the biggest things she's talking about on this album is her eating disorder and her relationships with food. Um, this is something that she even, you know, talks about on her verse on girl. So confusing with Charlie, where she says, you know, I tried to starve myself thinner, and then I gained all the weight back. This was something that, uh, prevailed until I think she said mid 2022. And. And most of her last album, solar power was written in the midst of like that peak of her being in an eating disorder. And she talked about how she felt it robbed her of her energy and her autonomy and her creativity and how looking at it, uh, from after the fact, I think is very, very interesting. You know, solar power was like in the middle of it. And now Virgin is like this album looking back on it, having, um, seemingly overcome that and, and how that changed her and change her own relationship. With her body and her relationship with, um, food and, and appearing at things, you know, like as, as somebody who's like been in the public eye since she was literally 16 years old. And then before we get into really the writing and songs of this album, like a quick note about the production, I think is very interesting, like Lorde's style of production in general. I think like what the magic of her has always been, is it her music feels so cinematic, like when you hear ribs or team or green light, like you could put those songs into like any movie on. Like there's some, you know what I mean? Like ribs could be in person being a wallflower and like all, like it is just so embodying that emotion where it feels like you are with your friends in that coming of age movie where the windows are down and you're all standing out the window, like, ah, like, you know, like she just has this ability to drive emotion in the song through her production. And I think one of the most interesting things about this album is that the production is actually pretty stripped back. Like you compare it. To a song like green light or a song like ribs, um, it is in this one, uh, a bit more calm. I want to say like simple, but I don't mean that in like a derogatory lens. I just mean like there is less going on. And I think that is because she really wanted to put the emphasis on to the lyricism of this album. Like, I think the most important thing really feels like the writing here. Um, and, and what she's writing about and how deep and emotional these. Things are and how, you know, playing with that dead space, I think draws more attention to it, which is really, really interesting. And in interviews, she talked a lot about the writing of this album and how she felt there was really this like deep loss of identity, especially after solar power. And on Zane Lowe, she said, quote, there has always been someone who I chose to be God, whether it was my parents or oftentimes men that she had been with friends, like to quote, to protect myself from being. I was the one who had to have the answers about what my life was meant to be. And I really felt that was so interesting. You know, growing up, you view your parents as like God, I think is like a very large over-exaggeration, but just like this omnipotent presence to like, has all the answers and knows what you should do. And anytime you ask a question, they're going to help you and how, you know, when she was a teenager getting famous, that was really her mother and her parents and they got her through that. And then as she aged, it became these various men in her life or relationships. She was in. And it's so interesting how, you know, like I feel like as humans, we are always looking for things outside of ourselves to find the answers to ourselves or validate these feelings that we feel within ourselves. And what's so scary is you're always chasing this subjective concept of one person's opinion that doesn't actually matter because they don't have to live the life that you live on a daily basis. They don't have to be you. They don't have to exist in your skin. And it's so interesting how we chase these feelings of validation. Like, it makes it feel so much more real and valid and tangible when we hear something or hear a decision from another person when in actuality, like all everything that we do is equally as important and relevant, if not so more. It's your life. Like, you know more about yourself than anybody else does. And in a song like Hammer, she literally says, quote, I'm ready to feel like I don't have all the answers. And I think that's actually a really beautiful thing to be excited about not knowing, to be excited. To be excited about this mystery of the future and letting go of that fact that you can't control it or change it. So you should just be and just be present. In her Zane Lowe interview, she literally said, quote, I'm so unconcerned with futurism. We've had so many awesome projections of the future, but now we're drowning in them. What about right now? We need help right now. We need tools right now. And I love that. I could not relate more. Like it is so, you know, there's always this discussion about. And Gen Z and Gen Alpha and boomers and this and that and the future and this. And it's like, I think we're all struggling now. I think economically we're struggling. Politically, we're struggling. Emotionally, we're struggling. Like, it feels like these systems of the world are crumbling around us. And I'm so sick and tired of talking about one day or in four years or next year or whatever. Like, I want now. I want answers to now. I want to know how to survive today. And I think that that is really, really. Beautiful that she was trying to, you know, write from that right from that perspective or at the very least writing. what she was she heard in that moment um and especially when you think about how deep the themes of this album go right starting with a song like hammer hammer is a song about her queerness and discovering her sexual identity based off the saying when you're holding a hammer everything looks like a nail it is meant to be this warning sign about our predisposed biases of the world that if you're getting attached to only one world for you or one solution to a problem then you're going to try and force that onto every single thing you encounter in life even when it's not the real answer she says i burn and i sing and i scheme and i dance some days i'm a woman some days i'm a man i might have been born again i'm ready to feel like i don't have the answers and i love that again it's okay not to know it's okay not to have all the answers i like her talking about this feeling of being born again you know i think that's where that virgin album title is really like drawing inspiration from this feeling of newness this feeling of not knowing the future and not caring that feeling of not having to have a sort of perfect label on her sexuality you know i think she talks about a lot in a song like you know man of the year as well like it's not meant to be some sort of grandiose coming out statement it's really just this like ambiguity like some days i feel very feminine some days i feel very masculine i don't feel one or the other all the time um and i like that i think it's like very important to have these sorts of like songs and writing where you're like discussing the ambiguity discussing the nuance um because i think that's a very hard thing for anyone to articulate themselves it's very hard especially again too when there's this idea of you know like labeling things labeling sexuality um and how the entire like basis of that system is like i'm gonna come up with a name for something so you can understand what i like and dislike even though again what i did like and dislike really has nothing to do with you you don't need to like know where i fall in some like sexuality spectrum just so you can like make a better sense of me in your mind even like talking about this uh metaphor of the hammer right like saying when you're holding a hammer everything looks like a nail and i think like the hammer is like a very aggressive tool you know it's like and like thud and like pound it and like um the hammer comes down hard i think that's what i'm trying to say and like that is a very it paints this very rigid way of thinking this very there is one motion to the hammer to one solution of you know you're hitting the nail and it goes in the wall or whatever and in actuality life is so much more nuanced than that it is so ever-changing there is no right perpetual right and wrong good and bad it is uh a growing process and um i think that's like what this song hammer is supposed to be it's it's it's supposed to be her talking about that but in her sexuality you know not fully understanding where she is and sometimes it changes on the day and that's okay right like there is beauty to that as well moving on favorite daughter explores the beauty and the pain of the relationships with her mother and talking about what it was like to be as famous as she was at only 16 years old quote i was a singer you were my fan when no one else gave a damn later on she says now every day the plans take off and every night the rooms fill up with people who are convinced i'm not just some kid faking it for your love and this was such an interesting song too specifically about her relationship with her mother because there is so much that i don't understand that i would really love to because i think it would add so much depth to the song like one of the lines she says quote you had a brother i look like him you told us as kids he died of a broken heart and for every door you open there's a room i can't go in i break in and i still can't find you um you know and one just this idea of her having an uncle who i guess has passed um and saying that he died of a broken heart and not knowing exactly what that means or or maybe that he didn't even actually die maybe they're just estranged um and not really knowing and fully understanding that relationship i think makes it harder to understand the second line but is such a good line where she says and for every door you open there's a room i can't go in i break in and i still can't find you so i think that's meant to talk about then when they're having these very like adult conversations you know mother to daughter and how when when she gets deep with her she finally feels like she's opening a door to understanding more about this woman who raised her and for every one room she goes in she finds two more rooms that are completely closed off and sealed and even when she breaks in and has to kick those walls out of the room she's like oh my god i can't go in and she falls down like she still can't find her it makes her mother retreat even more and i think that is like such an interesting concept for a song again even this idea of a favorite daughter the title being like trying everything you can to be this perfect daughter for your mother as a child of divorce um i remember like both my parents would just be fighting all of the time like the default was for them to be arguing about something um and my brother had a lot of issues and and i think like took the divorce a lot harder than i did because of that he was lashing out all the time and just like was skipping school all the time and was getting in trouble like there was just he just had a lot of issues and i very much empathize with like trying to be the perfect son or the favorite son um because there was so much chaos all around me all the time it felt like the the default i had to be was to be perfect because i didn't want to be that straw that like broke the camel's back and how difficult and strenuous that made the relationship with my mom because i would remember us getting into an argument about something where she would be mad at or not like disappointed or upset about me getting like a b minus on a test or in some class when like my brother hadn't even been to school in two weeks and i was like okay like that like that's what we want to like talk about here you know what i mean um and and how i have felt like i had to try so hard to be the favorite son the perfect son um and and how much that interestingly like pressure that you're putting on yourself as a child and and how that like really shapes i think you as a person in your world being you know i i very much feel like i have these like people pleaser tendencies even as an adult um that i really think stems from that like feeling of just not trying to cause chaos in my house another fascinating song on the album i felt was shapeshifter where shapeshifter explores how people use sex for validation and how we're always looking for something outside of ourself to feel more like ourselves in the song she says in my room we can do anything you want everyone that i've slept with all the pairs of hands i'm reckless if i'm fine without it why can't i stop and she has a lot of really fascinating metaphors in this song that i think really showcase like her roles in various relationships she says give them nothing personal so i'm not affected i've been the ice i've been the flame i've been the fire i've been the fire the prize the ball the chain i've been the dice the magic eight so i'm not affected i've been the siren i've been the saint i've been the fruit that leaves the stain i've been up on the pedestal but tonight i just want to fall and i i want to break it down line by line actually because i think that section is so fascinating starting with like if i'm fine without it why can't i stop and i think that is such a real thing to like as somebody who very much goes through like phases where they really want to be in love and it's like a romantic but then also is just like i cannot be i cannot bring myself to like put in the effort like going on a hinge date and how like deep down i do feel like i'm fine but also like we go through these phases where we can't stop or we just crave that validation or we just crave a human being or physical touch even um and even when we're at i think our most like emotionally stable we still crave that like validation from another person like there's just some weird factor about the human condition where like sometimes you just cannot believe something about yourself or feel something about yourself unless you hear it from another person however lord talks about how on in these hookups and things she's intentionally not trying to give them anything personal or any personal information about herself or her emotions so that she's not affected so that she doesn't carry that emotional baggage um after the hookup or whatever and then when talking about the relationships and these metaphors she says you know i've been the ice i've been the flame i've been the prize the ball the chain to me the ice is like um when you're the one in the relationship where you know that you don't care as much that you're not as like into it as they are or the flame is the complete opposite of that where like you are the one who is so deeply entrenched in these flames of passion and how much you like that person even if you know that they don't like you as much and then she says i've been the prize the ball the chain the prize to me can even be like you know the person getting you on that one night stay and or whatever and the ball and the chain again being this like a symbolism for like a actual like long-term relationship even things like the siren in the saint where sometimes she was the good person sometimes she was the bad person um and at the end saying i've been up on the pedestal but tonight i just want to fall um again i love that metaphor and songwriting how it connects like tonight she's saying the pedestal again being this like uh the way other people have viewed her the way that you know she's even put herself on this pedestal of like i'm too good for that person or i'm too good for this and how tonight i just want to fall and i think fall can be many things it can be in love. It can be fall into just this void of nothingness and like that feeling of letting go. It can be fall in the sense of like, I just want to take myself off the pedestal and view myself as like a real person. I love that like that the fall in that one perfectly connects with the line before talking about this pedestal, but also is is ambiguous in a way that I think it can apply to one or multiple of these things I just discussed. Then we get to broken glass, which is a song entirely about her eating disorder. And she said this was the hardest one on the entire album's right. In fact, it was actually the last song that she ever finished on the album. In the lyrics, she says, I want to punch the mirror to make her see it won't last. It might be months of bad luck. But what if it's just broken glass? I spent my summer getting lost in math. Making weight takes all you had won't outrun her if you don't get back. It's just broken glass. And I think this idea of broken glass is again talking about the metaphor of the mirror and seeing yourself in that reflection. And how in order to sometimes like see yourself differently, you got to break that glass. She's shattering it. And when she talks about spending the summer getting lost in math, I think it's again saying like literally, I was stressing over like the my body weight, my BMI, like that math, that number was so important to me that it took all that I had. And I had to keep trying to outrun this version of myself. And was just broken glass. It was just me not seeing myself in the mirror clearly, not seeing my reflection properly. That's what body dysmorphia is. That's what eating disorders are and how hard it can be to overcome. Again, like you, as somebody who's struggled with eating disorders in the past, as I've talked about on this channel, like it's, there's just, you see yourself differently. And like, I look at pictures of myself from like years ago and I'm like, what was I thinking? I was so small. I was like, like, so like this, like the skinniest I'd ever been. And like, at that time, I remember being so unhappy with my body and so unhappy with the way that I looked. And that's that broken glass. It's, it's this inability to see the reflection clearly. And I, that I, again, like I love that metaphor of, of the song. I think like one of Lorde's greatest strengths just as a writer is her ability to write these metaphors. Just broken glass is the song title is so indicative of the way that she, she felt she could not see herself clearly. And then on the opposite side of a song like broken glass is if she could see me now, which is a song where she is literally like writing a song to herself saying that she wishes this old version of her could see her now see this light at the end of that tunnel. She says, and she's very literal about it. Like when talking about this again, eating disorder, she says, quote, in the gym, I'm exercising all my demons, make them keep writing yesterday. I lifted your back. I'm exercising all my demons. I'm exercising in my body weight. I pick a song and listen to it till it's just a piece of music and everything else falls away, baby. Whenever you'd break me, I'd watch it happen. Like an angel looking down. It made me a woman being hurt like that. I can feel don't need fantasy now. And I love how, again, it's very literal in the beginning, like saying in the gym, I'm exercising and I am now stronger and healthier and feel better about myself and comfortable in the body, in my body. She's expelling those demons. We're talking about, I think this obsession with comparison when she says, you know, I pick a song and just listen to it until it's a piece of music. Like I'm not listening to a song and analyzing it and thinking about how I could have done it. Or why didn't I write a song like that? Or why did it get more streams in my song? Like she's just able to now enjoy the art for what it is and talking about how, you know, she looks back at this old version of herself, like an angel looking down. And while it was so traumatic, she said, it made me a woman to be hurt like that. And because it made her able to feel the deepest and darkest parts of herself so that she doesn't need fantasy. She doesn't need to try and force herself to be something that she's not or feel something that she's not. She is just comfortable in who she is as for the first time and how great that feels to find that sense of self and loving yourself. And then we get to the last song on the album, which is David. And it is one of the most emotionally charged songs. Um, I don't know who she is referring to when she says, David, I tried to look it up and do some research to my knowledge. She's never had a public relationship of anybody with that name. However, it does very much feel like she is singing about some sort of former lover. If you have a theory, leave it in the comments or if you know more than I do, please. I couldn't find it when I was doing any of the research for this video, but when she has lines like, you know, in the song, like, was I just someone to dominate a worthy opponent, flint to my blade. And now we're just playing in the shadows. And what came spilling out that day was the truth. If I had virginity, I would have given that to why do we run to the ones that we do? I don't belong to anyone. What I really think the song is supposed to be about is this idea of like, how much we sacrifice ourself or how much we change ourselves to be with certain people in our lives. And we have this sort of like addiction to connection, this addiction to the comfort of what that person being in our life is. Or sometimes you just when you're feeling insecure or unsure of things in your life, it's so hard to deal with that alone. So you're willing to lower your standards of friendship or romantic relationships just to maintain that feeling of intimacy and connectedness with a person. So then you find yourself running to that person that you know that you do, even though you know that they're not good for you. At the very least, that's the way I've interpreted this song. And overall, I think that this is a very, very poetic album. I think that's very much her writing style in general. It's full of metaphors and it's very, very flowery and poetry. It's very, very adjacent to a poem. My overall thoughts on the album as a whole on first listen, I think the most jarring thing on first listen, and this was not her fault, but was like, we had so much expectation, of this album and like the teasing of this album started with Brat. And you know, like a Charlize Coachella performance when she did like Lorde Summer. So I came into this album expecting it to be like a very uptempo, upbeat, hype music. And when the lead single was, what was that? Like even like, that's what I expected the entirety of the album to be. And it was actually the polar opposite. I was much slower. It was much more introspective. It was much more, you know, it was much deeper and raw and vulnerable. And that's not a bad thing. I'm not saying it's a bad thing by any means, but I think from like a marketing perspective and like an album rollout perspective, I was like shocked. Like I kept listening. I remember like the first three or four songs I was like, oh, like at some point there's going to be a transition and we're going to have like a big like moment. And that moment just never came. And again, it's not that it was good or bad. I think it's more about a gap in like expectation of the music versus what the music was. And an interesting thing, I think from like the label marketing side of like, there was, it felt like the expectation of this was like, oh, Lord Summer is going to be like Brat Summer. And it's not that at all. We're like crying about a relationship with our mom and like talking about our sexuality and blah, blah, blah. And again, like, I love that. I think that's so beautiful and interesting and deep, but like was not reflective of the beginning of this rollout in a way that I think made it very confusing. To the listeners. I also think it made it probably even more confusing for people who like maybe weren't big fans of Lord, but were big fans of Charlie. And this was their gateway and, you know, really getting into Lord or maybe they, you know, knew like pure heroin and melodrama, but then like fell out for a while and are like just getting back into it. Like, I don't know, like from a marketing perspective, I feel like there was something else that should have been done there. But overall, again, like I think that this is just a very deep, sad girl, bored album. And like, I love sad girl music. So I think it's, it's so, so beautiful. And I think she's so tackled these like themes of self very well. And I like that she touches on a lot of, you know, deep themes again, like her relationship with her mother, her sexuality, her relationship with past lovers and relationships. But like, it isn't, there's no clear cut answer to any of these things. There's no defined label to any of these things. There's no like, like she's sitting in that ambiguity. She's sitting in that mess of emotion and is coming out the side, like the other side of it, a better person and a more foundation and rooted in her sense of self without some like grandiose sense of closure. And I actually think that that's like very beautiful and very important. You know, I think if you spend your entire life searching for closure in your relationships with people, you're going to be searching for forever. And not all people have great, you know, logical, thought out rate reasons as to why they did something in an emotional state. Like that's just not the way human beings work. And I like that her album is not meant to, you know, show that it's not meant to show some grandiose sense of closure. It's just like, I experienced these things that were really freaking difficult and completely changed me as a person. And to this day, I still think about and struggle with all the time. But also those same experiences are what shaped me and shaped me into this person. Again, that's like what Shape Shifter as a song is about, you know, how she was shaped by those things and experiences and how she constantly was trying to change her shape to appease other people but how true happiness came um when she became comfortable in the shape that she had you know and again like that's why when we're talking about again like this album cover and stuff like i really i love the depth of it i think it's so rich and and it's one of those albums that i think i'll like view differently as i learn more about her as a person and like hopefully she does more interviews and stuff like that too because i think like really watching her talk about this work made me understand it a lot more it was a very tough album to like digest fully on my own um and i think i needed to hear about a lot of these stories and you know her experiences like these like where she was with an eating disorder you know what i mean to understand exactly what she was referring to when writing it and stuff like that um but overall i very very much like this album i don't know it's tough again we still don't have like a song of the summer vibe again i don't think that this is like this is not the album meant for that like this is a deep and emotional album um and we haven't had like that big you know fun uptempo upbeat like i'm excited i feel summer i want to run on the beach type vibe so i'm very interested to see we might not get it at all which is really really crazy um at this point i would say my two songs in the summer are like love me not by raven lanae absolutely obsessed with that song absolutely obsessed with her as an artist um and fame is a gun by addison ray like those are the two that i'll see summer's not over but i hope you all enjoyed this sort of lord album review i know it's like emotional and deep and kind of sad but like that's what the album was like this is what i had to talk about um and don't forget to subscribe follow us on spotify and i'll see y'all next week bye