TMS Discussion: Lorde's New Album Cycle, Cringe or Enlightening?

(Universal Music Group)

I don’t know if my age has finally caught up to me, but I’m just not feeling whatever is going on with modern popstars lately. Whether it’s Sabrina Carpenter’s “This skimpy outfit and sexy pose isn’t for men, they’re very feminist, duh,” schtick to whatever has been occurring with alt-pop critical darling Lorde this summer. Unlike Sabrina, whom I can only roll my eyes at ultimately, I feel a strange mix of concern and second-hand awkwardness with how the current press has gone for Lorde’s new album ‘Virgin.’ Sabrina, I feel, is mostly a willing participant in the publicity machine, and we’ll just have to wait and see how that pans out for her. With Lorde, I think this is a case of maybe not enough PR or management neglecting to oversee how she’s coming across in print. Her interview for Rolling Stone last month, in particular, probably revealed much more than any fan or reader really needed to know about the music artist. Lorde, birth name Ella Yelich-O’Connor, is lucky in that she’s almost 30 and beat the stereotype of teen popstars trying hard to break away from their juvenile images with over sexualization and getting hooked on hard drugs. But on the other hand, there also seems to be a bit of arrested development elsewhere. The wide-eyed brunette was never a hyper feminine teen starlet like Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus, instead having more of a Patti Smith or Kate Bush vibe with both her music and aesthetic. This is the same young girl David Bowie famously praised before his death in 2016. But like a lot of artists who start out really young, how do you follow up your debut, ‘Pure Heroine’ (2013), which is already considered a triumph and modern classic upon arrival? Especially when new, young, edgy pop girls like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo quickly overtook the same position into the next decade? For a while, Lorde was that pop alternative with ‘Pure Heroine,’ ‘Melodrama’ (2017), and the soundtrack for Francis Lawrence’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1 (2014). But with the disappointing reception to her third LP, ‘Solar Power’ (2021), many—including myself—wondered if the prime of her A-list relevancy is beginning to wane.

For the record, I don’t think Lorde is going to go through a public breakdown like Britney did or anything, in fact I think the opposite is happening. The aesthetic for ‘Virgin’ features very technical nudity from an X-ray of the inside of a pelvis as the cover art, to a vinyl sleeve featuring a photo of a bare pubic bush inside transparent, plastic pants. Not exactly a Playboy centerfold. It’s more personal and confident. THIS is the kind of subversive nudeness feminists are more likely to support. At most, the imagery just comes across a little pretentious, which to be fair, some have already joked about.

(Leon Neal)

The first two singles from ‘Virgin,’ ‘What was That?’ and ‘Man of the Year,’ have been doing well on the charts and the album reviews are solid too. In fact, I might have jumped the gun assuming her prime was over, as the present results are artistically proving otherwise. But the problem isn’t really the record, but more like how she’s presenting herself while selling it. If Sabrina is burying her head in the sane in response to her own controversial criticism, Lorde is doubling down on oversharing things that are TMI or not as deep as she thinks they are.

In the Rolling Stone piece, she shared some private details like how she hasn’t been on birth control for a while, doesn’t feel like she conforms to traditional gender values, regrets past relationships with older men. This is cool. This is normal and feels relatable. But then there’s a bunch of other, really messy things Lorde discussed too. Like admitting how “right-winged programming” is what initially convinced her to go off birth control, but she still thinks she made the right choice because now she feels ‘feminine’ again. Or how one of her current obsessions is with the infamous 1995 Tommy Lee/Pamela Anderson sex tape after she watched it while tripping on MDMA, and insists psychedelics assisted therapy is amazing. Maybe I’m just getting cranky, I don’t feel like any of this really needed to be shared? This sounds more like something you chat with a close friend in private about than with the whole world. The part about enjoying the Pam/Tommy sex tape is especially egregious since Pamela has been so vocal about disowning that video and not wanting any attention on it. I naturally understand wanting to share how comfortable you feel in your own skin, but the drugs and sex tape just seems exactly like the sort of thing you cringe at a decade later while looking back on your youth. This on top of all the artsy nudity and avant-garde music videos throughout the ‘Virgin’ roll out comes off just a little cringe-y and hipster-y. But I’ve also been wrong before and like I mentioned, Lorde’s word-vomit presently hasn’t appeared to affect her latest releases. Many celebrities have outlasted bad press in the past too. The Stone piece could just be an awkward fluke, and Lorde really is still the cool, hip artist we all know and love, and hopefully I’m just encompassing that one “Simpsons” meme of Abe yelling at clouds.