In the lead-up to her new album Virgin, Lorde has started to slowly open up about her broadening gender identity with the world. But before she was ready to do that, she confided in one of her new friends: Chappell Roan.
In a Rolling Stone cover story published Thursday (May 15), the New Zealand native revealed that she and the “Pink Pony Club” singer have gotten quite close over the past year, and that one of the things they’ve discussed is Lorde’s changing relationship with gender. When asked how she identifies now, the “Royals” artist told the publication, “[Chappell Roan] asked me this … She was like, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’”
“I was like, ‘I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man,’” Lorde continued. “I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but there’s a part of me that is really resistant to boxing it up.”
The musician also explained that she still identifies as a cisgender woman who uses “she” and “her” pronouns. But the complexities of her newfound gender fluidity informed much of the June-slated Virgin, the opening track of which Rolling Stone reveals finds her declaring, “Some days I’m a woman/ Some days I’m a man.”
Even so, Lorde added that she doesn’t think her gender expression is “radical” compared to what most transgender and nonbinary people face on a daily basis. In the United States in particular, the rights of LGBTQ people have been under constant threat for years, something Roan — a longtime advocate for the community and a queer-identifying artist herself — has spoken out about many times.
“I see these incredibly brave young people, and it’s complicated,” Lorde said. “Making the expression privately is one thing, but I want to make very clear that I’m not trying to take any space from anyone who has more on the line than me. Because I’m, comparatively, in a very safe place as a wealthy, cis, white woman.”
The star’s embrasure of her new gender expression is one of several personal transformations that has occurred since she last dropped an album, 2021’s Solar Power, four years ago. In addition to breaking up with Universal Music executive Justin Warren after about eight years together — “It was so painful, as they are, but there was real dignity to it,” she told the publication of the split — Lorde also recovered from an eating disorder, something she’s also been increasingly open about in the weeks ahead of Virgin‘s June 27 release.
“I felt so hungry and so weak,” she recalled of being obsessed with calories and protein intakes around the time Solar Power came out, specifically the day it dropped. “I was on TV [that] morning, and I didn’t eat because I wanted my tummy to be small in the dress. It was just this sucking of a life force or something.”
See Lorde on the cover of Rolling Stone below.
