Brace yourselves, darlings of the dawn—because Lorde has just cracked open Heaven’s gates and handed us a sonic baptism. Yes, Her Royal Highness of Melancholy Pop has announced her fourth studio album, provocatively titled Virgin, and if the lead single “What Was That” is any indication, we are not entering this new era gently—we’re being dragged in, drenched, and reborn under a violet sky.
Let me break it down for you, because this isn’t just a release—it’s an exorcism. A resurrection. A cultural blood moon rising.
“What Was That” dropped last week like a lightning strike in the middle of a silent cathedral. Gone are the barefoot beach days of Solar Power, the opalescent grief of Melodrama, the minimal whispers of Pure Heroine. In their place? A high-octane, synth-heavy anthemic eruption that sounds like if Kate Bush collaborated with Yves Tumor inside a gothic chapel made entirely of neon and broken glass.
It’s loud. It’s brash. It’s glorious.
And it’s not here to make you feel good. It’s here to make you feel alive.
Lorde has always danced on the tightrope between saint and sinner, and with Virgin, she’s yanked the rope down and turned it into a noose of expectation—refusing to hang from it, choosing instead to revive herself as a pop messiah in her own cracked image. The album’s title alone plays with purity and paradox. Virgin: sacred or untouched? Worshipped or denied? In Lorde’s hands, it becomes an altar to contradiction. A self-baptism in the holy waters of creative autonomy. It’s the sound of a woman re-authoring her mythology with bloodied eyeliner and a choir of spectral harmonies.
Now let’s talk about “What Was That,” because this track is not a whisper—it’s a scream into the maw of the collective unconscious. Kicks like a steel-heeled boot. It lurches and loops with a feral urgency, layered with throttling percussion and vocal distortions that feel like you’re eavesdropping on a dream during its final death throes. It’s Björk meets early Kanye in a séance held by FKA twigs. It’s chaos in Chanel. And like any good resurrection, it ends with a whisper: “What was that?” My dear, that was the sound of pop rupturing.
And let’s address the impending tsunami of noise from critics declaring, “But where’s the old Lorde?” I say: let her rest. That girl in the hallway sipping Diet Cokes and talking in metaphors is dead—and she killed her, graciously. Virgin is radical rebirth. It’s shedding the skin of the world’s expectations and emerging blasphemously divine. You don’t ride the wave. You become it.
Fashion-wise, you already know this era will wreak havoc on runways. Think veils, latex, and celestial mourning couture. Imagine Joan of Arc meets Alexander McQueen’s ghost in a post-club comedown dreamscape. I wouldn’t be surprised if she shows up to the Met Gala wrapped in stained glass.
And let me state this as gospel: pop is not supposed to be safe. It’s supposed to burn the house down and make you dance barefoot in the ashes. Lorde has lit the match, and Virgin might just be the album that brings the sacred back into an industry bloated with algorithms and AI-crafted mediocrity.
So gather round, children of the chaotic divine. Light your incense. Wipe your tears away with glitter. An era is upon us.
Lorde is back—not to save us, but to sanctify self-destruction.
And that, my dear heretics, is what the revolution sounds like.
—Mr. KanHey
