Latest news with #EllaYelichOConnor
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Lorde's new album 'Virgin' is messy, emotional, and perfectly suited for the moment
Lorde released her fourth studio album, "Virgin," on Friday. The lyrics are frank and transparent, tackling knotty topics like sex, drugs, and eating disorders. The album's themes reflect a cultural shift away from polish and toward authenticity. For most of us, the first words we heard come out of Lorde's mouth took the shape of a disavowal: "I've never seen a diamond in the flesh." Lorde wrote "Royals" in 30 minutes when she was 15 years old. Growing up in New Zealand, disillusioned with materialism and flex culture — especially in the US — she proudly cast herself as a distant observer. She saw, she understood, but she didn't participate. This posture resonated with millions. "Royals" topped the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for nine weeks. The smash hit was later certified diamond and won two Grammy Awards, including song of the year. Lorde has spent much of her career being portrayed as elusive and infallible by fans and media outlets alike. She tends to release an album every four years, and in between, she retreats from the spotlight. Even her stage name (Lorde's real name is Ella Yelich-O'Connor) evokes an office that's separate and superior. But a lot has changed since "Royals" was released as a single in 2013, just a few years after Instagram was launched. At the time, the platform was generally used for sharing one perfectly posed (and heavily filtered) photo at a time. Now, Instagram timelines look much less curated, with the savviest social media enthusiasts sharing unrefined "photo dumps" and spontaneous Instagram Stories instead. Pop culture has tilted dramatically in favor of relatability, transparency, and authenticity, too. Consumers no longer demand polish, poise, or aloof nonchalance from celebrities. "Mess is in," DJ Louie XIV, music critic and host of the Pop Pantheon podcast, recently told me while discussing the state of pop music. Several of last year's biggest hits corroborate his thesis: Taylor Swift embraced chaos and lust in writing "The Tortured Poets Department," and it became the best-selling album of her career. Chappell Roan canceled concerts, shared off-the-cuff videos on TikTok, scolded photographers on red carpets, and then won best new artist at the Grammys. Charli XCX's summer-defining album "Brat" — which the singer described as "my flaws, my fuck ups, my ego all rolled into one" — offers perhaps the clearest example of how this aesthetic has taken over. "Even Charli's outfits are tattered. She can't sing except in autotune. The whole album is about emotional messiness," Louie said. Charli XCX even recruited Lorde for a remix of the track "Girl, So Confusing," to hash out their long-simmering tension in real time. For the new wave of pop stars, he added, fans "seeing the seams is a plus." Lorde has surely noticed this trend because there's plenty of mess in her fourth album, "Virgin," released on Friday. Gone is the detached, enigmatic attitude from Lorde's debut album, when she insisted, "I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air, so there." Now, she won't only throw her hands up, but she'll admit to getting them dirty, just like the rest of us. Lorde has said that "Virgin" represents a sort of rebirth — a newfound willingness to follow her gut and experience the world without a protective veil. The album's 11 tracks tackle an array of knotty topics, from enjoying unprotected sex ("Clearblue") and yearning for her mother's approval ("Favourite Daughter") to dabbling with drugs ("What Was That") and struggling with an eating disorder ("Broken Glass"). Lorde's honest lyricism is punctuated with palpable details: a discarded at-home pregnancy test, a dead uncle whom she resembles, blown-up pupils, and rotting teeth. These images make her life feel real and human. "Mystique is dead," she sings bluntly. This is not to say Lorde has never used personal details in her music. However, her last two albums, "Melodrama" and "Solar Power," offered confessions often cloaked in self-conscious theatrics, metaphor, or irony. When Lorde sang, "I can't feel a thing / I keep looking at my mood ring / Tell me how I'm feeling" in the 2021 single "Mood Ring," she was poking fun at the cult of wellness and the blonde caricature she adopted in the music video. By contrast, when she sings, "Take an aura picture, read it, and tell me who I am" in the new album's opening track, "Hammer," it's clear that she's disclosing a raw moment of self-doubt. (And her habit of taking aura photos in New York City's Chinatown is well-documented.) Lorde's "Virgin" co-producer, Jim-E Stack, told GQ how the duo intentionally added sounds that felt raw or jarring to reflect the author's mindset. With AI and modern technology, he pointed out, it's easy for artists to make perfect-sounding records with no hiccups or texture. And when it comes to art, easy usually translates to boring. "That is what's exciting in music right now, and where innovation is happening: People channeling their imperfections and saying stuff that's a little scary," Stack told the publication. "There [are] definitely songs on Ella's record that are like, 'Whoa, can you say this as a pop star?'" He was right to be concerned; a lesser artist wouldn't be able to pull it off. But Lorde can, she should — and she did. Read the original article on Business Insider
The Guardian
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Alexis Petridis's album of the week
In April, Lorde launched her fourth album with a brief guerrilla gig in New York. A message telling fans to meet her at Washington Square Park – ostensibly for a video shoot – caused chaos, happily of the variety that gets filmed on multiple cameraphones and goes viral on social media. Thousands turned up and the police shut the event down, but those that evaded them were eventually rewarded by Lorde performing to new single What Was That with impressive gusto given that she was standing on a small wooden table at the time. It was surprising. Lorde's last release, 2021's Solar Power, wasn't the only album of that period on which a female artist who had become famous in her teens strongly suggested that doing so was a living nightmare – Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever and Olivia Rodrigo's Guts did, too – but it was the only one that sounded like a resignation letter, sent from a beach in Ella Yelich-O'Connor's native New Zealand: 'Won't take a call if it's the label or the radio,' she sang at one point. At another: 'If you're looking for a saviour, well that's not me.' But Solar Power turned out to be merely an out-of-office message. Four years on and Lorde isn't just back, but apparently back in the sharp-eyed party girl mode of 2017's Melodrama. What Was That compares falling in love to the sensation of smoking while on MDMA. 'It's a beautiful life, so why play truant?' she shrugs on opener Hammer. 'I jerk tears and they pay me to do it.' The album features electronics that chatter, throb and regularly burst into fat, rave-y hands-in-the-air riffs, a high proportion of bangers to ballads and a profusion of big choruses. The ballads tend to the epic rather than introspective, with even Broken Glass, the track about the singer's battle with an eating disorder, packing a hook you can imagine a stadium audience singing along to. In that sense, Virgin might seem like an act of consolidation – far closer to Melodrama, since hailed as a modern classic, than the understated and polarising Solar Power. But it seems infinitely more likely that Lorde has reappeared because she's got something fresh to say rather than to reassert her commercial pop bona fides. Despite the talk of pills, dancing and promiscuity, Virgin's overall tone is markedly different. Melodrama was an album concerned with events that happen in your late teens, from experiments with drugs to first major heartbreak. Eight years on, Virgin is haunted by a late-20s kind of angst, born of the sense that you're now incontrovertibly an adult, regardless of whether you feel like one, or whether you're still, as GRWM puts it, 'jumping from stone to stone in the riverbed … looking for a grown woman'. On Shapeshifter, a one-night stand brings ennui and an irrational fear that such behaviour is compulsive: 'If I'm fine without it, why can't I stop?' There's more heartbreak, but this time it's sharpened by the sense that the sundered relationship was meant to be the relationship: the album ends with Lorde repeating the phrase 'am I ever gonna love again?', a sentiment that also lurks around Man of the Year, Current Affairs and What Was That. It's worth noting that the fraught subject matter is invariably leavened with self-awareness and bursts of sharp wit. On Current Affairs, a romantic depiction of love blossoming under a lunar eclipse suddenly turns earthy: 'You tasted my underwear / I knew we were fucked.' Similarly, despite the choruses and the euphoric riffs, the sound of Virgin is noticeably unsettled and rough. The synths are distorted in a way that makes the resultant sound feel corroded; the more ambient textures tend to gust through the songs like drafts of icy air. The melody lines are regularly disrupted by bursts of incomprehensible, mangled vocals that suddenly appear then vanish. The biggest ballad, Man of the Year, builds to a climax that's less uplifting than panic-inducing: the weirdly clipped-sounding drums feel too loud, punching through everything else in irregular staccato bursts; the aforementioned distortion soaks everything, including the vocals; the electronics take on a punishing, industrial cast. Throughout, Lorde seems less like an artist cravenly rehashing former glories than one who began her career speaking directly to her fellow teens about stuff that mattered to them – and paving the way for Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo et al in the process – continuing to grow up alongside her fans. That's always a tough job, but one Lorde seems more than capable of thanks to writing that remains as skilful and incisive as it did when she was precociously skewering pop's obsession with unattainable lifestyles from an Auckland suburb in 2013. Powerful, moving, personal but universal – and packed with bangers – Virgin is the proof. Westside Cowboy – Alright Alright Alright A brief, frantic, bracing burst of chaotic, Pavement-ish alt-rock: feedback, guitar riffs that unravel into chaos, all over and done in just over 90 seconds.
ABC News
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Lorde reborn
Lorde's fourth studio album Virgin is a rebirth for a generational artist still in her 20s. Ella Yelich-O'Connor became a household name as a teenager after her debut album Pure Heroine delivered a new minimalist art-pop sound with hip hop production and a persona of magnetic self-assurance. The albums that followed represented two very different coming of age moments – 2017's Melodrama and 2021's Solar Power – for a young artist confronted with fame. Now, after over a decade in the public eye, Virgin walks the tightrope between experimentation and hitmaking pop, metaphorical obscurity and confessional sincerity. Ella joins Andy via zoom. Composer Christine Pan's new song cycle The Parts We Give has already had multiple lives. It's being performed live this weekend with two singers (Megan Kim and Wesley Yu) who perform the roles of Jiejie and Didi ('sister' and 'brother'). But it's also a DIY video game. Producer Ce talks to Christine about how operatic vocals, glitchy hyperpop, and 8-bit gameplay can tell the story of love in a Chinese-Australian home. The Parts We Give is at ESCAC by Brand X in Sydney, 27-28 June You can play the game via Fable Arts here Music heard in the show: Title: Royals Artist: Lorde Composer: Ella Yelich O'Connor, Joel Little Album: Pure Heroine Label: Sony Title: Man of the Year, Shapeshifter, Clearblue, Hammer Artist: Lorde Composer: Ella Yelich O'Connor, James Harmon Stack Album: Virgin Label: Universal Title: Ribs Artist: Lorde Composer: Ella Yelich O'Connor, Joel Little Album: Pure Heroine Label: Sony Title: Barangaroo Baby, Jiejie (extracts from The Parts We Give) Artist: Megan Kim, Wesley Yu Composer: Christine Pan Development recording courtesy of the composer Title: Carpet Artist: Brian Campeau Composer: Brian Campeau Album: Brian Campeau Presents Jo Dellin and the Bone Spurs Label: Art As Catharsis The Music Show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra, Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Yuggera and Turrbal land Technical production by Dylan Prins, Brendan O'Neill, and Roi Huberman
BreakingNews.ie
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- BreakingNews.ie
Lorde performs new album Virgin in full in surprise Glastonbury Festival set
Alternative pop star Lorde has surprised fans with a secret set at Glastonbury Festival performing her latest album Virgin, which was released on Friday, in full. The 28-year-old – whose real name is Ella Yelich-O'Connor – took to the Woodsies stage at 11.30am as fans screamed at the top of their voices, before opening with latest single and the record's opening track, Hammer. Advertisement Masses of festivalgoers had converged on the tent, with a bumper crowd waiting outside. Lorde treated the crowd to her latest album Virgin in full (Yui Mok/PA) Midway through her set she told the audience: 'How you doing? You OK? 'This is f****** sick, thank you so much for being here with us on the day that Virgin was born. 'We decided to play the whole record for you from front to back. Advertisement 'No, this record took me a lot, I didn't know if I would make another record to be honest, but I'm back here. Crowds gathered in the pit to watch Supergrass perform (Ben Birchall/PA) 'I'm so thankful to you for waiting for me, thank you for sitting in the sun right now, hope you have a sick f****** Glastonbury.' Waving her shirt to cool down, Virgin's lead single What Was That prompted mass singalongs as flags with the new LP's cover and title waved. Second single Man Of The Year climaxed with Lorde laying down on the floor of the building site-like set, as lasers shot out across the crowd from behind her. Advertisement Lorde finished her set with Green Light (Yui Mok/PA) Later in the set, she told the massive crowd: 'This is crazy for me too, I hope you understand.' The New Zealand-born singer pulled her top off to finish with a double hit of Ribs from her debut album Pure Heroine, which she said was first played at Glastonbury 2017, and Melodrama's Green Light, which saw the lasers turn from blue to the colour mentioned in the track. The final song prompted a football terrace-style singalong that almost drowned out Lorde herself. Friday crowds update - Click here for info on where you might find busier crowds today -> — Glastonbury Festival (@glastonbury) June 27, 2025 Virgin is the singer's fourth studio album, with her previous three Pure Heroine (2013), Melodrama (2017) and Solar Power (2021) all reaching the top 10 of the UK albums chart. Advertisement The singer is best known for songs such as Homemade Dynamite, Solar Power and her second single Royals, which reached number one in the UK singles chart. Elsewhere at the festival, British pop rock band The 1975 will be the first headliners to grace the Glastonbury Festival's Pyramid Stage this year when they perform on Friday evening. Lorde held a secret gig at Woodsies tent (Yui Mok/PA) Made up of four school friends, the group, known for songs including Chocolate, Someone Else and About You, is comprised of singer Matt Healy, bassist Ross MacDonald, guitarist Adam Hann, and drummer George Daniel. Other Friday performers include: Irish singer CMAT; hip-hop star Loyle Carner; rock band English Teacher; indie band Wet Leg; and Canadian star Alanis Morissette, who will take to the Pyramid Stage after a TBA act which will be performing at 4.55pm. Advertisement The five-day celebration of music and performing arts, which opened its gates on Wednesday, will also see headline performances from veteran rocker Neil Young and his band the Chrome Hearts, and US pop star Olivia Rodrigo. The BBC confirmed on Thursday that Young's Saturday Pyramid Stage set will not be broadcast live 'at the artist's request'. Supergrass performed on the main stage, 30 years after their classic debut album was released (Ben Birchall/PA) This year's line-up features a number of acts listed as TBA, as well as a mysterious act called Patchwork, which will take to the Pyramid Stage on Saturday. Festivalgoers have so far seen a clear morning after significant rainfall overnight, with temperatures reaching the mid-20s, according to the Met Office. Rain made small areas of the site damp in the early hours of Friday morning, but hot weather has since dried it. Spokesman Stephen Dixon told the PA news agency: 'Friday should start relatively sunny, with temperatures reaching into the mid-20s. However, there will be a touch more cloud later in the day and into the evening.' Looking ahead to the weekend, the Met Office's Grahame Madge said: 'Heat and humidity will be building over the weekend. We anticipate highs of 26C on Saturday, with high levels of humidity. By Monday temperatures can be anticipated to be over 30C. 'There is always the chance of a light shower, but there is nothing in the forecast that suggests anything heavier for Saturday for Somerset.' Avon and Somerset Police said there had been 38 crimes reported at the festival with 14 arrests made. Friday's line-up of events also includes a Q&A featuring Australian actress Margot Robbie at Pilton Palais and a Mountainhead Q&A with Jesse Armstrong, along with performances from psychedelic rockers Osees and Britpop veterans Supergrass. Fans have gathered at Worthy Farm for a typically spectacular line-up (Ben Birchall/PA) Saturday will see Irish rap trio Kneecap, who have seen one of their members charged with a terror offence, perform on the West Holts Stage at 4pm. Before the festival, UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said it would not be 'appropriate' for them to perform their slot at Worthy Farm. Rapper Liam Og O hAnnaidh was charged for allegedly displaying a flag in support of proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah at a gig in London in November last year. Last week, the 27-year-old, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was cheered by hundreds of supporters as he arrived with bandmates Naoise O Caireallain and JJ O Dochartaigh at Westminster Magistrates' Court in 'Free Mo Chara' T-shirts. He was released on unconditional bail until his next hearing at the same court on August 20. On Thursday evening, the rap trio posted a film they executive produced to social media, titled Stop The Genocide, which includes testimonies from a Palestinian activist and plastic surgeon on the war in Gaza. With a sunny few days predicted here at Worthy Farm, please take a moment to read this advice on staying safe in the heat. #Glastonbury2025 — Glastonbury Festival (@glastonbury) June 27, 2025 Performing in the coveted Sunday legends slot this year is Sir Rod Stewart, who previously said he will be joined by his former Faces band member Ronnie Wood, as well as some other guests. Sir Rod's performance will come after he postponed a string of concerts in the US, due to take place this month, while he recovered from flu. In celebration of his legends slot at the festival Southern Western Railway has unveiled a new plaque at Twickenham railway station, where it is said that, years ago, he happened upon blues singer and band leader, Long John Baldry, who he later played with in the Hoochie Coochie Men Among the other acts expected to draw large crowds this year is pop star Charli XCX, who is engaged to The 1975 drummer Daniel and will perform songs from her sixth studio album, Brat. Entertainment CMAT shouts 'Free Palestine' and wades into Glasto... Read More She is performing on Saturday night on the Other Stage, 15 minutes before the West Holts stage is graced by US rapper Doechii, another artist who has exploded in popularity in the last year. Other performers include: Prada singer Raye; US musician Brandi Carlile; Nile Rodgers and Chic; US pop star Gracie Abrams; Mercury Prize-winning jazz quintet Ezra Collective; US rapper Denzel Curry; and rising star Lola Young. This year, the BBC will provide livestreams of the five main stages: Pyramid, Other, West Holts, Woodsies and The Park.
The Guardian
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Lorde secret set at Glastonbury review – new album playthrough is bold but a little foolhardy
It would be misleading to call Lorde's performance at Glastonbury a 'secret set'. Though listed on the schedule only as the mysterious 'TBA', playing the Woodsie stage for an hour shortly after the festival's kick-off on Friday morning, the anonymous artist's identity was seemingly widely known weeks before. Ella Yelich-O'Connor herself had not been exactly subtle, meaningfully flashing her eyes at Radio 1's Greg James when he pointed out that the release of her fourth album, Virgin, coincided with Glastonbury's first day. On Thursday, ahead of Virgin's release, she provided confirmation by posting an aerial photo of the Woodsies tent on Instagram. It's a bold move, to debut a new album to a crowd who won't yet have had a chance to listen to it, let alone form any impressions – but Lorde has that kind of clout. Since her precocious debut, Pure Heroine, she has enjoyed a devout fanbase, many of whom look on her as a big sister figure: worldly and warm, but only intermittently available. With 2017's critically acclaimed Melodrama, too, she secured her status as a pop star who is only more attention-grabbing for having only sporadic releases. With Virgin – it's been made clear, from the three singles and pre-album press – Yelich O'Connor is taking a different tack to music, attempting something looser, more immediate and more off-the-cuff. She debuted first single What Was That with a guerilla performance in New York City's Washington Square Park, and has since played a series of small pop-up gigs to only the most connected fans. Second single Man of the Year and opening track Hammer both have a suggestive, half-finished yet considered quality, as though Lorde was gently attempting to warn fans: she is not the same star that they remember. Arriving on stage to strobe lighting and a huge cheer, Lorde is dressed simply in a white baby tee and cargo pants, resembling, with her shock of dark hair, Patti Smith – and also her younger self. For Solar Power – her uncharacteristically sunny third album, which received faltering reviews – Lorde experimented with bleach-blond hair and variously sexy and/or smooth brain'd personae. Today, accompanied by a low-profile band, she appears minimalistic, uncomplicated, direct: recognisable as the teenager who burst out of nowhere with a sharp-eyed satire of celebrity excess, known for her big hair and idiosyncratic dance moves. And the crowd is glad to be reunited. But when it becomes clear Lorde is playing the new album in full, with a seamless transition from What Was That into a new song, Shape Shifter, the crowd's energy visibly begins to flag. Yelich-O'Connor has always been a fully fledged performer; here, she kneels on the stage, hoiks up her T-shirt to caress her stomach, and plays to the camera with her face, smizing and snarling to impress upon us the personal nature of the lyrics. Like many songs on the album, Shape Shifter deals with Lorde's desire not to be pinned on to any one evolution or identity, and reflects on those she's lived so far: the siren, the saint. 'I've been up on the pedestal, but tonight I just wanna fall.' But though the audience extends her goodwill, bobbing gently to the music, it is just difficult to grasp the shape of these unfamiliar songs, lacking as they do immediate or obvious hooks and dealing with intimate and often challenging subject matter. She declines to give context, only addressing the crowd until after Favourite Daughter, a deceptively upbeat song about burnout, fuelled by familial (and fatherly) expectations. She thanks us for 'being here with us on the day that Virgin is born', and adds that this full album play-through may be a one-off. The crowd is clearly cheered by the sense of exclusivity, and to witness the return of their favourite pop star, but the songs aren't immediately arresting enough to make the moment. Clearblue stands out among the new tracks, bringing to mind both Yellow Flicker Beat, Lorde's excellent inclusion on The Hunger Games soundtack, and Imogen Heap's iconic Hide and Seek in its pared-back layering of electronic vocals. But it's a song for listening on headphones at home; the audience in the tent seems a little nonplussed. Later, the heartbreaking lyrics of Broken Glass – explicitly dealing with an eating disorder and the long reckoning of recovery – is lost on an audience who have not been given the chance to sit with them. 'I didn't know if I'd make another record, to be honest – but I'm back here, completely free,' Lorde says, to huge cheers. 'I'm so grateful to you for waiting.' The packed-out tent is proof of how many people are willing to follow her wherever she will go, to bear with her while she figures out how she wants to present herself to the world. When, after David, the final track of Virgin, the opening chords of her much-loved song Ribs ring out, it feels like Lorde is rewarding fans for their patience – quite literally throwing them a bone.
