Lorde: “I’m in the middle gender-wise”

Lorde has spoken about her gender identity in a Rolling Stone cover story published today. The pop artist recently released a statement alongside the announcement of her new album Virgin in which she described her femininity as “raw, primal, innocent, elegant, openhearted, spiritual, masc.” At the 2025 Met Gala, she described her look as an “easter egg” for the album, as it made her “feel like a man and a woman.”

Speaking to Rolling Stone‘s Brittany Spanos, Lorde said she is “in the middle gender-wise,” adding, “I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man,” when asked if she identifies as non-binary. She explained, “I know that’s not a very satisfying answer but there’s a part of me that is really resistant to boxing it up.”

She described her decision to come off birth control for the first time in over a decade while making the album as making her feel like she had “cut some sort of cord between myself and this regulated femininity.”

“It sounds crazy, but I felt that all of a sudden, I was off the map of femininity,” she said. “And I totally believed that that allowed things to open up.”

As for how this relates to her music, Lorde says she expects a strong reaction to Virgin. “There’s going to be a lot of people who don’t think I’m a good girl anymore, a good woman. It’s over,” she said. “It will be over for a lot of people, and then for some people, I will have arrived. I’ll be where they always hoped I’d be.”

Virgin is due for release on June 27. Lorde will then go on the Ultrasound tour. Kicking off in September 2025 in Austin, Texas, the run of dates will see her playing arenas across the U.S., before hopping over to Europe and the U.K.