The music video for Man Of The Year features Lorde binding her chest and dancing in mounded soil. Photo / Universal Music New Zealand
The music video for Man Of The Year features Lorde binding her chest and dancing in mounded soil. Photo / Universal Music New Zealand
Lorde released Man of the Year, her second single from the upcoming album Virgin.
The music video features Lorde binding her chest and dancing in mounded soil.
Lorde performed a pop-up show in Auckland last night, previewing songs from her new album, due June 27.
Lorde has released Man of the Year, the second single off her new album, and a revealing music video to accompany.
At 4pm the song was released on music streaming platforms with the track appearing to detail the experience of re-establishing her independence and beginning to move on after abreak-up.
In the lyrics, the singer refers to herself as being “like new from my recent ego death” and later states “you met me at a really strange time in my life”.
The music video for the song, uploaded to YouTube at the time of the single’s release, starts with Lorde sat on a chair in a minimally furnished Los Angeles building, wearing a white T-shirt and loose jeans.
Across the three minutes and 15 seconds of the music video, the camera draws back from a close-up of Lorde’s face to show her taking off her shirt and binding her chest with two strips of duct tape.
The 28-year-old then stands and walks across the length of the gallery-like space, revealing a floor piled with soil. For the last minute of the video the artist dances dramatically amongst the dirt, contorting her body and throwing the soil in the air and over her chest.
Lyrics from the song include the phrases, “Swish mouthwash, jerk off, ah, days go by in a haze, stay up and sleep late”.
The video ends with the singer collapsing on the mound and trying to catch her breath, before turning away from the camera with her body in the foetal position.
The top-rated comment under the video, posted by user @hrrycc reads: “This is not just music. This is art.”
The singer last week announced the track as the second single from her upcoming album, posting an image to her Instagram account showing a bare midriff, with a chest obscured by duct tape.
Lorde in Thom Browne at the Met Gala (left), and an image the singer posted to Instagram to promote her next single, Man of the Year. Photos / Getty Images, @Lorde
Earlier this month, in a Rolling Stone cover story, the singer recounted how she wrote Man of the Year during a period where she had stopped taking birth control, been diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder and was exploring her gender identity.
The article outlined the single’s inspiration coming to Lorde as she was “sitting on the floor of her living room, trying to visualise a version of herself ‘that was fully representative of how [her] gender felt in that moment’.”
“What she saw once again was an image of herself in men’s jeans, this time wearing nothing else but her gold chain and duct tape on her chest.
“The tape had this feeling of rawness to her, of it ‘not being a permanent solution’.”
Lorde told Rolling Stone journalist Brittany Spanos: “I went to the cupboard, and I got the tape out, and I did it to myself.”
Lorde performs to a group of fans at an Auckland venue. Photo / Instagram
The Aucklander is in the midst of a promotional cycle ahead of the release of Virgin, her fourth album, which is due to be released on June 27.
In the bathroom of the YMCA, the singer performed Man of the Year and three other songs from Virgin to a select group of fans. After the performance, attendees received a limited-edition paper towel print depicting Virgin’s album artwork and tracklist.
In the Rolling Stone profile, Spanos describes Virgin as “feral, wild, and physical, full of Lorde’s most from-the-gut singing ever“. The album is said to be Lorde‘s most vulnerable yet. She admitted to the publication she is “terrified” to open up about the album.
“There’s going to be a lot of people who don’t think I’m a good girl any more, a good woman. It’s over,” she told Spanos.
