It’s a Lorde summer, and we’re all just living in it. From the release of her fourth album Virgin, which has shot to number one in the UK, to performing a packed secret set at Glastonbury that was met with rave reviews, the musician is firmly back on the scene with her signature pop tracks that speak to a generation.

However, it hasn’t all been plain sailing for Lorde, whose real name is Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor. She recently revealed she thought she might never make music again after struggling with an eating disorder. In an interview with Radio 1, she explained that at the beginning of 2024, she was ‘not in a great way on a lot of levels’, continuing ‘I’d never felt more disconnected from my creativity’.

In the interview, Lorde went on to detail how obsessive thoughts about being thin consumed her creativity. ‘This was a period where all I was thinking about was trying to weigh as little as possible, and going to sleep thinking about food, and waking up thinking about food and exercise,’ she explained. ‘That was my creative pursuit, that’s where it was all going. At the time, I was like, “I need to stop doing this, because it’s blocking all of my artistry.” Once that went away, it all started coming back.’

After this period, Lorde took some time to focus on her wellbeing – which she has previously said involved MDMA therapy. During an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert this month, Lorde explained she used this technique to overcome crippling stage fright. The controversial therapy involves using the substance under the guidance of mental health professionals to treat trauma.

‘I had truly the most horrific stage fright, really since I was like 5, doing community theatre,’ Lorde said, adding that MDMA therapy ‘truly changed the game’ for her stage fright.

This period of recovery allowed Lorde to get back to work on her fourth album, when her creativity came back. ‘It was hard, it was scary,’ she told the BBC about the process of writing the album. ‘Some songs aren’t easy. I made a lot of changes and really put my artistry front and centre and made that my full-time job and I got a lot of stuff out of the way.’

She went on to explain how the album marked a moment of growth for her since the release of her previous album, Solar, in 2021. ‘I was very weak. I look back now, and I don’t have that same feeling of floating away. I eat as much as I want and need now,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t very embodied. I often would think about not eating very much as I felt like every bite of food I had was stolen. I was like, “Hang on, this has gotten weird”’
Lorde debuted her new album at Glastonbury in a secret set. Speaking about the process of performing after so long, Lorde explained she felt like ‘a bag of dust’ afterwards, because she hadn’t been on stage ‘on my own like that for years.’

In recent years, a growing number of female pop stars have been speaking openly about body image. Lorde, alongside Billie Eilish and Charli XCX are part of his cohort. Lorde appears as a guest on a remix of Charli XCX’s track ‘Girl, So Confusing’, in which she addressed the fluctuations on her weight. ‘For the last couple years, I’ve been at war in my body,’ she sings. ‘I tried to starve myself thinner, and then I gained all the weight back.’ Taylor Swift also opened up about her past struggles with disordered eating in her 2020 documentary, ‘Miss Americana.’

In her new album, Lorde also sings about her struggles with body image. One lyric reads ‘I wear smoke like a wedding veil/ Make a meal I won’t eat.’ In another, she sings ‘I spent my summer getting lost in math/ Making weight took all I had.’ She previously told Radio 1 how her collab with Charli last year had encouraged her to be more vulnerable in her music.

However, in the past Lorde has preferred to keep personal matters out of the private eye – including her romantic life. However, in 2023 reports started circulating she had split from her long-term boyfriend Justin Warren, who was 12 years her senior. Lorde hinted at the split in her 2023 newsletter, where she wrote to subscribers ‘I’m living with heartbreak again,’ continuing ‘It’s different but the same. I ache all the time, I forget why and then remember. I’m not trying to hide from the pain, I understand now that pain isn’t something to hide from, that there’s actually great beauty in moving with it. But sometimes I’m sick of being with myself.’

She confirmed the split in an interview with Rolling Stone this year. ‘I went through a breakup,’ she said. ‘It was so painful, as they are, but there was real dignity to it and grace and a lot of respect. It continues to be a relationship that I cherish.’

It’s clear that Lorde is definitely back with a bang – and looks set to stay.