Lorde has by no means been afraid of catharsis. The singer, actually, strips it down within the new video for her entrancing single “Man of the Year,” providing an unadorned model of herself as revealing because the track’s lyrics. Within the placing visible directed by Grant Singer that dropped on Thursday morning (Could 29), the 28-year-old vocalist is caught in shut up, earlier than the digicam pans out to point out her sitting on a stool in an empty loft whereas carrying denims and a white T-shirt.
“Glidin’ via on my bike, glidin’ via/ Like new from my current ego dying/ Sirens sing in a single day, violent, candy music/ You met me at a very unusual time in my life/ Take my knife and I minimize the wire,” she sings in a loud whisper over a gently plucked bass guitar. As she describes turning into “another person,” somebody she says is “extra like myself,” Lorde strips off her shirt and covers her breasts with electrical tape within the prelude to a thrashing dance routine on a pile of sand unfold out in a nook of the loft.
The track co-produced by Lorde and Jim-E Stack — her fundamental collaborator on the upcoming Virgin album due out on June 27 — builds from the alluring, refined bass accompaniment to a loud rumble as burbling keyboards and distant drums bubble up alongside cello from Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes.
“Who’s gon’ love me like this?/ Oh-oh, oh, who may give me lightness?/ Approach he move down via me/ Love me like this/ Now I’m damaged open/ Let’s hear it for the person of the yr,” she sings on the refrain of second track launched so removed from the LP. “Man of the 12 months” follows April’s “What Was That,” which debuted at No. 36 on the Billboard Sizzling 100. In an Instagram post previewing the second single final week, Lorde wrote that it was an “providing from actually deep inside me,” calling it the “track I’m proudest of on Virgin.”
In a current Rolling Stone cowl story, Lorde mentioned writing “Man of the 12 months” after stopping her contraception for the primary time since she was a teen and realizing that her gender felt extra fluid than she’d beforehand realized. Simply earlier than writing the track, she mentioned she taped her personal chest with duct tape — as within the video — in an effort to succeed in a imaginative and prescient of herself “that was absolutely consultant of how [her] gender felt in that second,” she advised RS.
“I felt like stopping taking my contraception, I had minimize some form of wire between myself and this regulated femininity,” she added. “It sounds loopy, however I felt that swiftly, I used to be off the map of femininity. And I completely believed that that allowed issues to open up.” The unadorned “Man of the 12 months” look was previewed at this yr’s Met Gala, the place Lorde wore a strapless, slate-colored strip of cloth throughout her chest that she told Vogue was an “Easter egg” that “actually represents the place I’m at gender-wise. I really feel like a person and a girl form of vibe.”
Along with the track and video, Lorde additionally revealed the observe checklist for her anticipated follow-up to 2021’s Photo voltaic Energy. Among the many songs on the album are: “Hammer,” “Shapeshifter,” “Favorite Daughter,” “Present Affairs,” “Clearblue,” “GRWM,” “Damaged Glass,” “If She Might See Me Now” and “David.”
Lorce will launch the Ultrasound world tour on September 17 on the Moody Middle in Austin, TX on an outing that can characteristic particular friends Blood Orange, The Japanese Home, Nilüfer Yanya, Chanel Beads, Empress Of, co-producer Jim-E Stack and Oklou on choose dates.
Watch the “Man of the 12 months” video and take a look at the Virgin tracklist reveal under.