Thank the Lorde: the indie pop icon’s long-awaited fourth studio album is nearly upon us.
Following the release of her single “What Was That,” Lorde announced that her new album Virgin will come out on June 27, just in time for a sequel to last year’s Brat Summer — though we have to admit Virgin Summer doesn’t have the same ring to it.
The similarities to the Brat phenomenon, though, are no coincidence. In a recent interview, Lorde revealed how her longtime frenemy Charli xcx inspired her new project.
Speaking to Jack Saunders on BBC Radio 1, Lorde said, “Brat coming out really gave me a kick in a lot of ways. It forced me to further define what I was doing because Charli had so masterfully defined everything about Brat and I knew that what I was doing was very distinct to that.”
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“When a peer throws the gauntlet down like that, you’re like ‘OK, yeah, we’ve gotta pick it up,’” she added. “I’ve spoken to a lot of peers who’ve all had the same feelings. It’s very sick and I’m so grateful to her.”
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After seeing so many of her fans speculating, Charli stepped in to set the record straight.
“I’m just like, ‘Why are you affected by someone else’s sexual preference?’” Beer wondered in a new interview.
Lorde, of course, was herself a part of Charli’s Brat era, lending a viral verse to “Girl, so confusing” as the duo quite literally worked it out on the remix. The overwhelmingly positive response to the song, which featured deeply personal lyrics about Lorde’s childhood and relationship with Charli, helped validate the direction for Virgin, she explained.
“Brat came out and she was doing that from the other side of the coin, almost,” Lorde recalled. “Doing the remix together and meeting her in that place of rugged vulnerability and cracking open the thing — people responded really well to that. I was like, ‘OK, cool, this is a good thing to be doing.’”
“I really suffer from this thing of not feeling my own power,” she added. “And the remix just started me up and I was like, ‘No no, people are listening and they care and your words carry real weight.’”
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