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Lorde’s ‘Virgin’: All 11 Tracks Ranked
Lorde's 'Virgin' is the bravest album of her career. Read our preliminary song rankings.
If the explicit sample of Jamaican veteran Dexta Daps’ 2014 single “Morning Love” didn’t make it clear, “Current Affairs” is an evocative sex rumination, full of spit, moans, underwear and beds on fire — but just as immediate is Lorde’s wounded delivery, with several syllables elongated as she tries to navigate physical and emotional entanglements. Yet as Lorde sings to her mother over the blown-out drums and stray production effects of “Favourite Daughter,” “Everywhere I run, I’m always runnin’ to ya”: she’s still chasing her parent’s approval all this time later, and giving her audience a more in-depth portrait of her upbringing and familial bonds. “Shapeshifter,” a searingly effective admission of using sex as a means of acceptance, is an exception — Lorde uses the hook to list the several versions of herself that have existed in relation to romantic partners — but within the verbose recollections, two phrases are repeated, “I’m not affected” and “I just wanna fall,” that slice to the heart of the song.
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