Kiwi musician Lorde has opened up about her breakup with former partner Justin Warren and her health battles in a new interview with Rolling Stone.
The 28-year-old singer song writer recently announced her fourth album, Virgin, would be released on June 27.
Ella Yelich-O’Connor, known to the world as Lorde, said she was “terrified” to open up about the album, with songs she described as “rugged,” vulnerable, and messy.
The theme is a contrast to the tranquil New Zealand soundscape of her previous Solar Power album, which came out over four years ago in 2021.
During the interview with Rolling Stone, Lorde confirmed she and music executive Justin Warren, 45, had gone their separate ways after being romantically linked since around 2015.
The pair met when Lorde was signed to the Universal Music label. They never publicly spoke about their romance.
“I went through a breakup,” she told Rolling Stone. “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.”
She said the breakup helped her internally assess parts of her life that needed to change, and the “feeling that I had never been alone”.
“I think because of leaving home so young and not quite being ready to be on my own. But I had this very acute sense that I needed to be alone to really meet myself.”
Lorde also revealed she had confronted an intense eating disorder in which she felt “so hungry and so weak”, sharing an example of when she did not eat during press for the Solar Power album.
“I was on TV [that] morning, and I didn’t eat because I wanted my tummy to be small in the dress. It was just this sucking of a life force or something.”
Lorde told Rolling Stone she was unhealthy, “starving herself and obsessing over her size”, but not enough to raise alarm bells for the people around her.
Towards the end of 2023 she saw thinness was controlling her, and while she’s still working towards a better relationship with food and her body, she had ended the compulsion to count, track and restrict herself.
She also spoke to the magazine about using MDMA and psilocybin therapy to help her with stage fright.
During sessions between 2022 and 2024, Lorde would take one of the psychedelic drugs and “let the euphoria free her body and her mind”, Rolling Stone reported.
“I was touring without stage fright for the first time.”
Last year, she collaborated with British singer Charli XCX on a remix of Girl, so confusing — on a re-release of the Grammy award-winning Brat.
The lyrics of Lorde’s verse on the song gave an initial teaser to some of the challenges she had faced with body image.
“‘Cause for the last couple years, I’ve been at war in my body, I tried to starve myself thinner, and then I gained all the weight back, I was trapped in the hatred,” she sang.
More recently, the music video for Lorde’s latest song, What Was That, reflects a more androgynous look and feeling the singer is going for.
The song’s music video was filmed at a mysterious pop-up event in New York City’s Washington Square Park that was initially shut down by police.
