virgin, turning 24, and growing up with lorde (issue 21)

Or how I am learning to exist in chaos and accept ferality

At the time of publishing this essay, I am a day away from turning 24. I was born with a Cancer sun and rising and a Libra moon. This means I have a strong reaction to nearly everything and have a penchant for balance, emotional stability, and comfort. Existing at this particular moment, though, feels like anything but comfort and balance. These past few years, since I have passed through the structured academic period of my life and grown into an adolescent adulthood, life has felt askew; I figured by this time, I would have everything in order. Yet, it seems that nothing is working as planned. Instead, I exist in a constant state of flux. Everything has felt like a large question mark hanging over my head like a guillotine’s blade. Am I supposed to be doing this, or is this going to kill me?

Today, Lorde released her fourth studio album, Virgin. Her first since 2021’s beautifully idealistic and sad Solar Power, the album’s preceding singles and promotion hinted at a bombastic return to her synth-pop roots. Like many other young people born between the turn of the century and the explosion of social media, Lorde occupies a very seminal space in my life. She is near effortlessly cool, she changes in ways that feel important without giving up her honesty, and she always seems to pluck every thought and feeling out of my head and orchestrate them into the most beautiful alt-pop crescendos.

Pure Heroine is one of the first album rollouts I can remember. Her sound was unique, sparse, haunting in a way. As a middle schooler attending class with the same people from my kindergarten class in the same town I grew up in, her detailing being bored and stifled by the suburbs was gospel, and her bountiful joy in wanting to grow up was palpable. The album only became more pertinent when I got to high school as one of the only, albeit closeted, queer kids at an all-boys Catholic high school. I have distinct memories of listening to “White Teeth Teens” in a class where I was friends with no one and feeling like I had someone who knew what it felt like.

Melodrama came in 2017, where I first began to understand my queerness and had my first experiences with a debilitating crush. I could write an entire essay on this album’s profound impact on my life, but it laid the groundwork for basically everything. These big, daunting emotions and thoughts, even from menial high school experiences looking back, were not something to shy away from. They were beautiful, important byproducts on my Cancerian heart, which I just began to wear on my sleeve at the time. It taught me about living in the moment and how to be in love, which I needed as I didn’t do either at the time. Emotional intimacy still eluded my grasp, but I felt every ounce of it from Melodrama in tandem with the way you think you know everything at age 16: a wild and fluorescent rush. Everything would be bright and new and exciting.

When Solar Power came out, I will admit it did not pull me into its gravity fully. I felt its sheen of positivity and bright colors did not feel lived in or authentic, something Lorde herself would later admit to. Yet, upon losing love and navigating pivotal periods of life within the year of its release, something shifted. I heard Solar Power for what it was, not escapism for positivity, but escapism for necessity. There is a somberness to the album, asking if there will ever be a world to live happily again or if it ever did at all, probing for answers to your younger self’s questions, contemplating how to get back on the path to true salvation, understanding the loss of a loved one, even leaving your entire life up to an old dried up wishbone. It was comforting to have these big questions pondered while I was losing the love I was promised years before. An album with a summery aesthetic was strangely my breakup album in the middle of an Indiana winter. It was the balance, the light instruments with heavy conversations, heartbreaks and new joys to experience, that kept me grounded as the ground began to thaw.

Now, we’ve arrived at Virgin. Phrases like “written in blood,” “raw,” and an ambiguous gender identity decorate the album’s promo. The music so far is bombastic and frenetic, crashing and loud in a way that doesn’t demand attention, but creates a vacuum for its importance. There is a certain fearless and impulsive chaos to the album, from her admitting to watching the infamous Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson sex tape to find the beauty in it to rejoining Instagram and TikTok and foregoing her longstanding email newsletter to communicate with fans to stating she is a woman, besides the day she is a man. It feels like, for the first time, Lorde is unconcerned with an image, thriving in what she sees as real and honest rather than an organized idea to return to safely. Whereas her first three albums have colors associated with (black, deep royal blue, dandelion, respectively, and in my opinion), this is clear. Virgin’s cover shows an X-ray of her hip bones, her IUD, and her pants’ zipper and belt buckle. It physically strips the image away from her to illuminate what is inside, something eerily hollow in reality and ambiguous in gender.

Now, I hate to be the millionth and first person to make this specific comparison, but Lorde’s current promo, in a way, reminds me of the heralded brat release from 2024. We all remember where we were. It was snappy, almost violent in its abrasion, and cutting. Yet, it is also the most in-her-body Charli xcx has been to date. She felt present, not hiding behind a farce or an idea. This release, both figuratively and literally, laid the groundwork for Virgin, considering the duo’s remix of “Girl, so confusing” reinvigorated Lorde to make new music and continue with the honesty both performed on the track.

Thus, it seems ironic that the ushering in of Lorde’s new era works in tandem with my 24th birthday. Not only does it feel like a gift for me (which I will gladly take!), but it feels like a guidebook, a message from an older sibling who knows what I need to hear. With every Lorde release, I enter a new phase of my life. Getting older used to sound scary on “A World Alone” or “Secrets from a Girl,” but it feels different this time. The heartbreak is no longer like “Liability,” but now something that can be exorcised through dancing and making out with new people on the floor. Virgin marks a point where it feels okay to not know, to accept whatever comes my way, and enjoy it while I do so. It feels like the first album I am living in parallel with.

23 did feel like a golden age for me at the time. In hindsight, it is where everything was shifting to lead me where I am now. Something I pulled heavily from both brat and Virgin ahead of its release was the feralness and strong sense of living for now. Both feel instructive to living haphazardly, without any idea of what comes next. Especially Virgin, which feels like it reminds me there is so much to be felt, so why not live and feel everything? Feel the heartbreak, confusion, the drunkenness from love. This idea of living to feel and with unjustified care could be an outrageously idealistic mindset. Maybe it is a symptom of reaching my mid-twenties, a scary phase to write out. Of course, a sense of nihilism and doom has to encroach at some point. But I am entering the time where I feel absolutely untouchable, where my freedom is all I have, where I am growing into myself. It feels so beautiful to be able to live wildly and freely. Like Lorde, I finally feel okay with accepting the unknown and feel justified in living in chaos, whether it be of my creation or not. In reality, neither of us will ever have all the answers for everything, no matter how much either of our lives. So we must live, each in our singular existence, to figure out all we can learn. I must do anything and everything within my limits because I’ll never have another life to do it. I know if I do not live how I want or need to now, I never will. So yes, getting older is a frightening idea, but isn’t the idea of stagnation, ignorance, or not knowing even scarier?

It is this impulse and idea I have let lead my life as of late. I should do everything, feel every emotion, revel in it all. While it is not quite the same thesis as Virgin, there is something Lorde called “the ooze” in her Rolling Stone interview: the act of letting herself take up more space in everything she does, whether physically or creatively. She credits this oozing as helping her learn about her sexuality and gender more and deepening her understanding of the world around her. While it would not be the word I choose to describe this practice, it is something I may have been doing namelessly by allowing myself to feel everything there is to feel.

These feelings I have gained since the sun last passed through Cancer steered my life in strange ways. It is the first time where I feel like I both have no idea what I am doing, yet am exhilarated and completely in control. I am mostly stifled by my jobs and money, which often feel like I am being crushed by the weight of both. It is difficult to live and create when so much of my day is spent on standard office tasks and being on my feet for hours on end. I have reached a point where I wonder how I must operate under this system in a way that satisfies me, because most of my day is spent focusing on everyone but myself. This is not stemming from a place of selfishness, but rather self-preservation and taking care of my spirit. It comes from wanting to be present to enjoy my life. I have also dealt with massive writer’s block, which also frightened me. I graduated with a degree in this, shouldn’t I be able to create like it is natural? Yet, I realized I am too focused on doing everything correctly and perfectly, a pitfall and something Lorde also struggled with before deciding to embrace her simplest feelings while writing this album.

Despite this crushing weight of standard adult responsibilities, I will not be crushed by it. There are so many other joys in life I have experienced since last year’s Cancer season. Like Lorde, I have been on a journey with sexuality and gender and how both affect my life. It has been freeing to remove a lot of the strict restrictions I had around both and have more open self-monologues about expressions of both. It, as many things are, remains an open-ended story, never quite reaching a point of resolution, but following the thread has been exciting nonetheless. My friends, both new and old, built monuments of love and trust with me; every day, I am grateful to talk with them and continue building. I have never felt so present in my body physically and spiritually. I’ve spent days and nights under stars, underwater, under flashing lights, and under covers. I have felt new emotions, meditated, and begun to understand why my brain thinks the way it does. I read, loved, danced, listened to great music, watched great movies, and fell in love with my life a little more every day. I am beginning to be grateful for my prominent smile lines.

At the time of finishing this essay, Virgin is less than twelve hours away. I am listening to all of Lorde’s brief discography in anticipation. These songs are so tied to certain emotions, specific days, people, and times, but I remember how new they all felt at the time. Walking into L4 truly does feel like the first time I’m meeting Lorde where she is at, in tandem rather than her being steps ahead. In a way, it makes me feel like I am on time. It gives me relief that this is how 24 is supposed to feel. In the spirit of letting everything ooze out of me creatively, there is minimal editing done here. I apologize if there are too many jumps, disconnected ideas, or poor word choices, but this is everything that feels right to me. I have also decided to wait to post this until the album comes out. I will circle back with my thoughts.

Update: Virgin absolutely rocks.