Lorde (identifying not as non-binary) is only a few weeks into her new album cycle and has brazenly opened up about the gender journey revelations she’s experienced during the making of ‘Virgin’. Obviously gender discourse has been a hot topic for roughly forever but in 2025 I’m relieved Lorde has done the hard work of empirically resolving the complex and sensitive issues we all already resolved in 2015. I’m so thankful we live in an era of multi-millionaires doing the hard, thankless tasks of finding answers to the big questions and doing the lord's work for us. Where would we be without them?
A few weeks after the revamped Lorde clumsily stomped Charli XCX’s Coachella stage wearing a duct-taped boot we were gifted with new interviews and photoshoots declaring she had been through major life changes and was entering her expansive-yet-unlabeled-gender-flip-flop era. Her stripped back styling in Document Journal and Re-Edition magazine was giving baby she/they realness, finding bliss in boxer shorts, baggy jeans, oversized socks and a distressed white vest. I personally had never witnessed the boundaries and constraints of gender be contorted with such malleable ease.
But just as I thought her omnipotence over (and in-between) the binary couldn’t get any more powerful, earlier this week Lorde announced her upcoming second single ‘Man of the Year’. The artwork elucidated the ambiguous custom Thom Browne dress she wore for this year's Met Gala, confirming her choice of dress had nothing to do with celebrating the theme (‘Superfine: Tailoring and Black Style’) but more to do with utilising the opportunity to promote this upcoming single. If there ever was an opportunity for a successful white multi-millionaire popstar to celebrate everything that is brilliant and unique about the tailoring and vision of black artistry, you’d think this theme might present itself as an opportune moment to do so wouldn’t you? “Nah, best to plug my new music instead” thought Lorde. And Katy Perry for that matter.
However I will give Lorde her dues, by wearing nothing but duct tape covering her boobs and a pair of casual blue denim jeans, it helped bring a relatability to gender discourse for the masses. By doing so she’s already achieved what many before had struggled to do: make gender discourse palatable to the mainstream without the audience being fear-mongered into condemning all social groups outside of their own. Leslie Feinberg could never.
Obviously I’d never criticise our multi-millionaire gender messiah but if you were to oblige me for one moment I might pass comment on the duct tape. It does kind of appear to be implying binding, except it isn’t constricting from the front to the back by the sides, it’s reading more like an elegy for a top. But it isn’t binding. It’s duct tape. Fabric for clothing? What was that? Get with the times already, follow the Lorde. Utilitarian and impractical? Groundbreaking.
Thankfully Lorde doesn’t need to bind because she is beyond whatever pre-conceived notions of gender we all take for granted. She is also cis, and a multi-millionaire. Lorde doesn’t seek affirmation in flatness, or the archaic notion that we must remove body parts to revel in the bliss of gender euphoria. She’s asking us why we need to do that anyway? It all sounds a bit too much like hard work doesn’t it? To forcibly hide the part of you that signifies to others you are what you are not is a thing of the past so why bother? Do less, be more. This is the Lorde’s way.
Stuck in a perpetual state of intrigue I did what any self-respecting tranny with a laptop would do and watched her interview with Rolling Stone to torture myse…sorry, for research purposes. In all fairness it did provide some answers whilst adding fuel to the fire of my bemusement. Unbelievable scenes.
As Lorde spoke to Rolling Stone about the 7 artifacts that inspired her new album, she revealed tech devices should be treated with more irreverence and hers have many “dings” in them, which I appreciate actually, as there is a comfort in owning material objects inscribed by your own lived-in existence. However she goes on to describe the iPhone as a magical object filled with liquid crystal, capable of conjuring up her words out of thin air, "if i showed that to someone in medieval times they'd think i was a magician."
Finally she pulls out her key to unlocking the mystery of gender: a roll of duct tape. The multi-millionaire describes being in Vermony on a snowy night and her boots were leaking, so she used duct tape to seal the leak and it connected her to parts of herself that needed reinforcement. After covering her laptop and phone in duct tape it became a portal into her masculinity.
She went on to explain the cover artwork for ‘Man of the Year’ was after having a vision of herself performing topless. In the vision she was wearing something that hinted at binding, covering her boobs but it wasn’t binding. So she grabbed the nearby duct tape and quickly pulled 3 strips across her chest. In quite a tender moment she recalls seeing herself in the duct tape bralet and saying “that’s me, that’s who I am” which initially led me to reading this statement as a trans-identifying narrative. However she then goes on to say “I just saw my body as an extension of a work of art”. Which makes me think the binding or lack thereof was merely a costume for her current project. A surface for her ideas to play off of, gleaming in the absence of meaning beyond the ego.
If you have seen the Galliano documentary on MUBI (you should) you might have heard bells ringing when reading Lorde’s statement above. During the documentary a few people commented on Galliano’s creative process treading the fine line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. For example his controversial SS2000 ‘Homeless’ show for Dior caused quite a bit of pushback when he explained the inspiration being the homeless he observed when jogging along the Seine.
“Everything was fodder for the creative mind. That is how he thought about the world and it did not occur to him to think “this might offend somebody else”. I realised John only see things which influences him, that he chooses, but not what was behind, he only sees the surface of things”
This sentiment rings true to Lorde’s creative process. The fact that recent discourse has been centred around whether or not Lorde is or isn’t Non-Binary goes to show she is way out of her depth. In the same way Galliano shouldn’t have made poverty a spectacle, Lorde really should have read the room and not made gender the focal point of this record. It’s not 2015 anymore and Trans rights across the world are being etched away, day by day. I won’t attempt to list everything here as I’m sure if you’re reading this Substack you’ll be more than aware of what is happening right now but when we’re denied access to public spaces, completely banned from playing sports and having healthcare for Trans children completely erased, now is not the time to celebrate a multi-millionaire’s exciting new creative era involving them floating amidst the spectrum of gender and having a lovely time with it. Lorde isn’t trans. Lorde is allowed to play with gender and still be celebrated because doing so as a cis multi-millionaire lacks any disruption to the status quo and therefore remains safe and palatable.
Sorry, lost focus briefly there, back to the interview. A picture of her in a distressed top and a pair of jeans pops up on the screen and she says when she bought the jeans she tried them on and said to herself “this is the person who makes this album”. However she noticed the jeans were quite baggy and needed to be held up. Sadly at the time the multi-millionaire didn’t own a belt (shocker) as all she was using at the time was…a shoelace. Yep. Which was a look the multi-millionaire gender messiah described as being “ really cool”. Well, in the end she eventually saved up enough pennies and got herself a belt. Hurrah..
I’m actually getting so bored of her at this point but I need to share one final tidbit of her experience when essentially on her gap yah. Whilst making ‘Virgin’ she recorded “all over the place”: London, L.A, Vermont. She stayed in spare rooms and random hotels. She even roughed it at a hotel in Dalston where she photographed multiple fleas on herself. Thankfully she was able to use the photographic evidence to complain at the reception and vacated the hotel without having to pay. Quids in I suppose! God forbid the flea-infested hotel in Dalston use the funds to make improvements to their facility. I suppose the hotel facilitating the authentic experience required to satisfy Lorde’s pretending-to-be-poor schtick and receiving money in return wasn’t enough. Maybe for Lorde, pretending to be poor was cool up to a point, until she flew too close to the proverbial flea-infested shit stain of the Sun and got bit to shit.
To be honest for years I’ve already reached my threshold of multi-millionaires cosplaying as poor but cosplaying as non-binary was a new one for me. Granted, if this campaign took place in 2024 or 2023 I might not feel so all-consumed with frustration but due to the current socio-political state for the Trans community in the UK and around the world, it just feels completely tone-deaf. If Lorde had come out as non-binary it may have calmed my flames a little but the whole “i-don’t-need-to-put-a-label-on-it” schtick isn’t gonna cut it for me this time. There’s nothing to celebrate here other than a multi-millionaire trying on a costume and enjoying how it feels.
Good for her I suppose.
thank you for watching that awful sounding interview and reporting back on it so i don't have to! I have not been abreast (ha) of the lorde thing but i feel up to speed now