Lorde marked the one-year anniversary of Virgin on June 26 by posting 49 demos from the album's sessions, alongside a long newsletter to fans. The pop singer calls the tracks "skeletons" of Virgin, and houses them on a new page of her site, XRAYS, next to photographs, notes, and artwork ideas.
Some of the demos reach back to 2022. Among them is "Holding a Hammer," a slower, deconstructed take on the album's opener "Hammer," built over a bubbling beat. Four more versions of that song land alongside it, five in all, each carrying a slightly different bed of effects. Alt takes on the single "What Was That" ride different beats, and three versions stretch the spare "Chewing Gum." The funky instrumental "Flux Day 2" turns up too. "Man of the Year," "Current Affairs," "Clear Blue," "GRWM," and "If She Could See Me Now" each get the multiple-version treatment.
In the newsletter, Lorde says she spent the sessions healing from what she called a "brief but long-gestating eating disorder." She also points to a recent breakup and an earlier diagnosis of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, a severe form of PMS. "Gradually I put music and language to old stories I had been scared to tell. I purged them out of me and felt lighter," she wrote. "Living in these songs had an incantatory effect. I felt myself change."
She singles out one record above all, Charli xcx's Brat, calling it "a weather system of fearlessness and fragility." Lorde thanks the "360" singer for keeping her "close and [giving] me the perfect amount of space."
The page comes with photographs too, among them close-ups of the acne Lorde described as "a thick beard going down my neck." Other frames date to her teens, filed under "archival research," next to outtakes from the Virgin promo shoot.
