After releasing her last album Solar Power in 2021, Lorde made a decision that she wouldn’t release any new music until she had worked through one thing.
The Royals singer revealed in a new interview with Document Journal that she was “going through a lot” around the time of her 2021 album.
“Summer of 2021, there was this feeling of, ‘Okay, we’re back out here, and everything’s totally fine!’ – and it was just so not the case,” she said.
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The singer touched on feeling “grief” and “anger” that she needed to process. But also revealed that she was feeling the pressure of the unrealistic body standards that are so often held against women.
“I had made my body very small because I thought that that was what you did as a woman and a woman on display,” she said.
“I thought, ‘I’m small. This will communicate to people that I’m taking my position seriously’.
“It had the effect of making me [feel] totally ungrounded. I was very weak.”
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Since then, the 28-year-old says she has worked through her body image and relationship with food.
“I look back now and I don’t have that same feeling of floating away,” she said.
“I eat as much as I want and need now. I wasn’t very embodied.”
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It was a slow process but it was an intentional one with the singer deciding not to put any new music into the world until she felt like herself again.
She finally feels like she’s found that place and is set to release her new album Virgin in June.
“This was honestly the biggest goal for me of this new record,” she said.
“It was like, I’m not going to put anything out until I’m in my body the way I know I’m supposed to be, to be able to do my work.
“That’s all I did the last four years, basically. This album is a by-product of that process of fully coming into my body and feeling the fullness of my power.” 
Now, Lorde feels she’s no longer ”hiding from [herself]”.
Recently, Lorde joined Charli XCX on stage at Coachella, it was a full circle moment for the singer who says she felt like herself again on stage.
“To be out on stage at Coachella, I had this feeling of like, you know, your first day of middle school [when you’re like, ‘this is a sick outfit, I love my outfit so much’.”
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“I just felt so like myself. Charli [XCX] was playing, and I just walked out into the grass, and was like, this is it. This is everything you could dream that your work would feel like, getting to do this with a homie.”
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