For Lorde, labels aren’t some finite factor. That is very true on the subject of her gender and the best way she identifies.
For the Autumn 2025 problem of Dazed, Virgin pop star Lorde, born Ella Yelich-O’Connor, spoke candidly about her identification — and the complexities of navigating it. The New Zealand-born artist referred to herself as being “within the center gender-wise” in her Rolling Stone interview again in Might — a element that the media was fast to latch onto.
The “What Was That” singer, who nonetheless identifies as a cis girl, maintains she/her pronouns. “Proper now, it feels because it ought to,” Lorde instructed Dazed, although the concept of carrying make-up and ladies’s clothes, she admits, can generally really feel disquieting.
“However some days, I can’t put on girls’s garments. I’ve had to determine the way to have my make-up performed in a approach that doesn’t make me really feel trapped or tight or just like the improper factor. Now I simply inform individuals, ‘Deal with it like male grooming.’ There all the time have to be choices for clothes, or shirts. I had no concept there can be days once I felt completely out-of-body, and it was as a result of I used to be carrying girls’s garments when it wasn’t the suitable factor,” she stated.
In 2023, Lorde taped her chest for the primary time. The expertise coincided with when she began writing her second Virgin single, “Man of the Yr.” The observe and accompanying music video draw inspiration from this very second — from the “very pure model” of herself she linked with after taping up.
“I’d actually been feeling these things bubble up and speaking about it rather a lot in remedy,” she instructed Dazed. “We began writing the tune, and I noticed this TV efficiency of it [in my mind’s eye], and it wasn’t even completed. And within the efficiency I noticed myself in denims, no shirt. And I considered how I might truly try this on TV. It wasn’t a bra. I had this roll of tape and grabbed it, put my denims on, taped up, and noticed myself – and was like, ‘F**okay, that’s me.’”
On “Hammer,” the opening observe of Virgin, Lorde, at one level, sings, Some days I’m a girl/Some days I’m a person. The fluidity of her gender expression has been a hotly mentioned matter even earlier than the album’s launch in June. In Might, she recounted a dialog with Chappell Roan to Rolling Stone, with whom she’s develop into shut mates, relating to her altering identification.
“She was like, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’ And I used to be like, ‘I’m a girl apart from the times once I’m a person.’ I do know that’s not a really satisfying reply, however there’s part of me that’s actually proof against boxing it up,” the “Present Affairs” singer recalled to Rolling Stone.
Lorde has since clarified her dialog with “The Subway” singer, telling Dazed, “I believe I misquoted that — I really feel actually dangerous. She stated, very sweetly, one thing like, ‘So your pronouns are altering?’”
How Lorde approaches her gender identification is significantly matter-of-fact — this is how she’s feeling proper now. This is what feels truest to herself on this second.
“It’s all a journey. I do not know the place it’s gonna go; it doesn’t really feel like I’ve arrived anyplace everlasting in any respect. I’m certain it’ll maintain unfurling, the best way these items do. It actually took me unexpectedly how a lot disgrace I felt — feeling all that come up wasn’t simple,” she instructed Dazed. “Whilst I see my mates coming totally into their genders, feeling nothing however delight, love, respect and bliss. I simply assume it takes time to metabolise and discover itself.”
The “Shapeshifter” singer appears snug within the not realizing. She’s in no rush to determine all of it out, telling the journal, “I’m excited to search out out the place that lands, if it ever does land. Your complete life, it retains unfurling.”
