The 7 standout songs on Lorde’s Virgin

Lorde’s Virgin is here and it’s already causing mass hysteria. Of her game-changing discography, it’s arguably her most uninhibited, touching on unprotected sex, hating your body, feeling unabashedly horny, and generational trauma. Much will be made of its startling subject matter (and its many interesting creative choices) in the ensuing days and weeks, but for now, these are the songs that immediately grabbed our attention upon first listen.

“Hammer” is a rare song that deserves its role as an album opener. It bursts like a geyser, a furiously bubbling rush of drums built around a truly addictive vocal oscillation that makes it sound like Lorde is living it up right next to your ears. Co-produced by the singer with Jim-E Stack, the song is hi-def euphoria on every level as Lorde sings about a fountain’s mist hitting the face, an impromptu piercing on Canal St., and getting an aura photo taken. Lorde’s right: New York City actually hits so hard when you don’t have a bitch in your ear telling you it’s over. —Steffanee Wang

“Favorite Daughter” is quintessential Lorde, a dance-ready song with a hint of melancholy and lyrics that hurt. In an interview with Apple Music, Lorde said that the song is about her complex dynamic with audiences, the pressures of whirlwind fame, and her relationship with her mother, who she called her “foremost idol.” With a thumping beat, a satisfying build-up, and a sweeping chorus set over rippling synths, the song embodies desperation and a willingness to do anything to be “the favorite.” It’s a feeling that we’ve all felt at one point or another and Lorde makes us feel it again when she sings, “Everywhere I run, I’m always runnin’ to ya / Breaking my back to carry the weight of your heart.” —Nora Wang

The messiest song of Lorde’s entire career is also one of her most visceral. “Current Affairs” is about infidelity except Lorde is the home wrecker. And the way she writes about an illicit fling is a true goosebump-inducing revelation: It began while they watched the 2024 solar eclipse, her feelings came on like “a flare,” he spit in her mouth and tasted her underwear. The line between gross and raw is razor thin and Lorde leans heavy on the gut-triggering aspect of the latter to convey the total hold it had over her system. When she sings “Mama, I’m so scared” and crying over the phone, you don’t just picture her shaking in her room, you keel over and feel it too. —SW

In hindsight, I don’t know why there haven’t been more songs about unprotected sex and the scare of unexpected pregnancy. Maybe it has to do with palatability. There isn’t really a PR-friendly way to talk these sorts of brash, unconsidered decisions, especially in a political climate that will more readily demonize a woman’s sexuality over that of a man’s. Lorde doesn’t try for tastefulness on “Clearblue,” she just wants to bring you into the room where her mind is spinning and she can’t decide if the symbol on the stick will spark thrill or devastation or both. “Oh, wish I’d kept the Clearblue,” she sighs. The song’s nonexistent beat, her layered vocals, the bared soul of her songwriting all serve to get at an unspoken truth, one that eclipses the flimsy borders of a so-called anthem. —SW

The “GRWM” that Lorde references on this song is “Grown Woman” and not the TikTok buzz-phrase “Get Ready With Me.” The track is a mood board of navigating, and re-navigating, puberty as a fully-grown adult — and the tendencies to regress. As Lorde continues to uncover what being a woman, or a person, in her body means to her at any given moment, she reflects on the experiences that defined her first foray into adolescence at 13 while drawing parallels to her current state: She fantasizes about physically washing the memory of a man off her body and reminisces about the thrill of purchasing alcohol as a teenager, all the while admitting that she yearned to speed up the process of growing up while fearing age and aging. “A grown woman in a baby tee,” she remarks, “Wide hips, tooth chipped / ’96 skin scarred, looking forward.” It’s a universal feeling: the paranoia of coming across too awkward and overthinking everything that’s your body, maybe even since birth. Then, we grieve the time spent wishing we were older, and the fact that young women are never truly afforded the privilege of innocence. —Cady Siregar

In the run up to the release of Virgin, Lorde spoke a lot about the personal shifts she’s weathered in the last few years. Much of the album mines the thick of that rocky terrain, but “If She Could See Me Now” comes from a clearer vantage point. “Whenever you’d break me I’d watch it happen, like an angel looking down,” she sings as she recalls the out-of-body experience a traumatic relationship with someone she dismisses as a womanizer and fame-seeker can trigger.

“If She Could See Me Now” isn’t about lingering in the past though. In the verses, Lorde pushes her body to extremes and reaps the rewards. “I swim in waters that would drown so many other bitches,” she flexes from the crest of a wave. It’s at this height she can assess her strengths: physical, yes, but also as a musician and romantic survivor. She has no grand message for the person she was, just an acknowledgement that she has arrived where she needed to be. Sometimes that’s all it takes to feel content. —David Renshaw