For Lorde, labels aren’t some finite thing. This is especially true when it comes to her gender and the way she identifies.
For the Autumn 2025 issue of Dazed, Virgin pop star Lorde, born Ella Yelich-O’Connor, spoke candidly about her identity — and the complexities of navigating it. The New Zealand-born artist referred to herself as being “in the middle gender-wise” in her Rolling Stone interview back in May — a detail that the media was quick to latch onto.
The “What Was That” singer, who still identifies as a cis woman, maintains she/her pronouns. “Right now, it feels as it should,” Lorde told Dazed, though the idea of wearing makeup and women’s clothing, she admits, can sometimes feel disquieting.
“But some days, I can’t wear women’s clothes. I’ve had to figure out how to have my make-up done in a way that doesn’t make me feel trapped or tight or like the wrong thing. Now I just tell people, ‘Treat it like male grooming.’ There always need to be options for clothing, or shirts. I had no idea there would be days when I felt totally out-of-body, and it was because I was wearing women’s clothes when it wasn’t the right thing,” she said.
In 2023, Lorde taped her chest for the first time. The experience coincided with when she started writing her second Virgin single, “Man of the Year.” The track and accompanying music video draw inspiration from this very moment — from the “very pure version” of herself she connected with after taping up.
“I’d really been feeling this stuff bubble up and talking about it a lot in therapy,” she told Dazed. “We started writing the song, and I saw this TV performance of it [in my mind’s eye], and it wasn’t even finished. And in the performance I saw myself in jeans, no shirt. And I thought about how I would actually do that on TV. It wasn’t a bra. I had this roll of tape and grabbed it, put my jeans on, taped up, and saw myself – and was like, ‘F**k, that’s me.’”
On “Hammer,” the opening track of Virgin, Lorde, at one point, sings, Some days I’m a woman/Some days I’m a man. The fluidity of her gender expression has been a hotly discussed topic even before the album’s release in June. In May, she recounted a conversation with Chappell Roan to Rolling Stone, with whom she’s become close friends, regarding her changing identity.
“She was like, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’ And I was like, ‘I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.’ 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 “Current Affairs” singer recalled to Rolling Stone.
Lorde has since clarified her conversation with “The Subway” singer, telling Dazed, “I think I misquoted that — I feel really bad. She said, very sweetly, something like, ‘So your pronouns are changing?’”
How Lorde approaches her gender identity is considerably matter-of-fact — this is how she’s feeling right now. This is what feels truest to herself in this moment.
“It’s all a journey. I have no idea where it’s gonna go; it doesn’t feel like I’ve arrived anywhere permanent at all. I’m sure it’ll keep unfurling, the way these things do. It really took me by surprise how much shame I felt — feeling all that come up wasn’t easy,” she told Dazed. “Even as I see my friends coming fully into their genders, feeling nothing but pride, love, respect and bliss. I just think it takes time to metabolise and find itself.”
The “Shapeshifter” singer seems comfortable in the not knowing. She’s in no rush to figure it all out, telling the magazine, “I’m excited to find out where that lands, if it ever does land. Your whole life, it keeps unfurling.”
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