Lorde Unleashes 'Virgin' With Guerrilla Shows and Buzz
If you were anywhere near a neon-lit street or stumbled into a bar humming with anticipation this past month, you might have caught a secret Lorde pop-up. The singer’s fourth studio album, Lorde’s 'Virgin', landed on June 27, 2025, and her approach has been anything but predictable. Instead of rolling out the album with radio play and press junkets, Lorde hit up major cities—Auckland, Sydney, London, New York—for last-minute gigs, surprise performances, and livestreams. Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right was one hotspot, lit up with fans glued to a first live taste of Lorde’s new material.
Three singles—‘What Was That’ (haunting and cinematic), ‘Man of the Year’ (all inward-looking lyrics), and ‘Hammer’ (minimal and pulsing)—set the tone ahead of the album’s release. This isn’t the sun-drenched world of 'Solar Power'; with Jim-E Stack and Dan Nigro sharing production credits, 'Virgin' plunges into darker, electronic textures, exploring personal upheaval, tech’s grip on daily life, and threads of female heritage. The project is as bold as the way it was promoted, shifting from Lorde’s past analog tendencies into digital experimentation and sonic risk-taking.
The secret wasn’t kept for long at Glastonbury Festival. Instead of a primetime main stage set, Lorde crashed the Woodsies stage with a secret night-time performance, giving fans a full, raw preview of 'Virgin' before the official release. Social feeds quickly blew up, sharing every lyric and twisting synth in real-time.
Tour Plans and a Big Friday for New Releases
Lorde’s rolling this energy straight into the Ultrasound World Tour, which starts September 17 in Austin, Texas. Early ticket chatter online shows fans scrambling for seats—she’s skipping coast-to-coast, and no one wants to miss the unpredictable setlist she’s now known for.
But it isn’t just Lorde shaking up the Friday music scene. Alex Warren, a creator turned pop force, dropped new music this week—fans flocked to social media to dissect every lyric and melody, fueling anticipation for a bigger project. ROSÉ from BLACKPINK, meanwhile, came back with her own solo material, bringing K-pop star power and a hypnotic vocal style to a fresh audience outside of the group. Don’t sleep on KATSEYE, either. The rising artist generated a ton of buzz with her latest single, and those in the know are already tipping her for breakout success this summer.
From secret gigs to late-night global streaming, the competition for this week’s standout release is fierce. But with Lorde’s unconventional tactics and magnetic new tracks, it's clear that 'Virgin' is one of those albums everyone will be talking about, both for how it sounds and how it showed up on the world stage.