Lorde is making a much-buzzed-about return to music this summer with a new album that boasts some provocative artwork.
The vinyl edition of “Virgin,” released last week, appears on the two-time Grammy winner’s website with a “Parental Advisory” warning label that reads: “Adult Images.” The album’s accompanying eight-page insert includes a nude photo of Lorde with the camera zoomed in on her crotch, visible through a pair of see-through pants.
Over the weekend, a representative for Lorde confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that the image is indeed of the singer, whose real name is Ella Yelich-O’Connor.
Not surprisingly, the photo has drawn heated chatter among Lorde’s fans.
“opened the app and the first thing I see is lorde’s coochie in my face???” one person wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “WITH BUSH mind you.”
Added another: “Unless it is playing an instrument, I don’t need to see it.”
Others, however, came to Lorde’s defense, with some comparing it to now-iconic images of Madonna in her “Erotica” era.
“You all came out of one of these, it’s the most natural thing in the world. You wouldn’t be alive if these did not exist,” one person wrote.
“Wait… Is this the new album art from Lorde that everyone is talking about? It’s a beautiful photo, and the entire vinyl package is, too, but come on, it barely shows anything,” added another. “No need for all the discourse. 90′s Madonna would’ve [killed] you all.”
Lorde, who hails from New Zealand, is no stranger to titillating imagery. The cover of her 2021 album, “Solar Power,” found her flashing a hint of derrière as she ran on a beach.
In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Lorde said the album’s cover ― an X-ray of her pelvis in which an intrauterine device, or IUD, is clearly visible ― is an homage to the Rolling Stones’ 1971 album, “Sticky Fingers,” which, incidentally, is also believed to have inspired the cover of Madonna’s 1989 album, “Like a Prayer.”
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“I thought bringing that feeling to a female body was really interesting, and it sort of scared me a little bit, the image,” she said. “I think that’s sort of the feeling you need to have with art sometimes.”
Imagery aside, “Virgin” has been met with near-universal praise from music critics, with Rolling Stone calling it Lorde’s “most introspective record yet.”
