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Lorde Launches a Revealing, Rebellious, Rejuvenating New Chapter With ‘Virgin’: Album Review
Lorde looks back on a decade of growing up in public with her exhilarating and liberating fourth album, 'Virgin.'
That’s not a criticism — props to her for handling fame so fully on her own terms, despite the anxieties she’s spoken of in her musical collaboration/ therapy session with Charli xcx on “Girl, So Confusing,” and the robust publicity and social-media campaign leading up to this latest, much louder chapter in her career. There are heavy emotions in every song, which she’s said stem in part from a breakup, an eating disorder and general anxiety and self-loathing; there are references to punching mirrors, stage fright, ego death, obsessing over body weight, even bodily functions. On “Shapeshifter,” possibly the most powerful song on the album, the lyrics make their point — “I’ve been up on a pedestal/ But tonight I just wanna fall” — but for the final minute her overdubbed vocals repeat those words as the music builds in speed and velocity, climaxing with a glorious wash of racing beats, celestial electronics and a string arrangement from Rob Moose.
Or read this on Variety