Lorde previews next single Man of the Year from new album Virgin

• Lorde has previewed her next single, Man of the Year.
• The song was conceived while the Kiwi singer was exploring her gender identity.
• Virgin, Lorde’s fourth album, will be released on June 27.

Lorde has previewed the next single off her upcoming album Virgin.

The New Zealand singer has posted an image to her Instagram account showing a bare midriff, with a chest obscured by strips of duct tape.

Lorde captioned the picture “Man Of The Year. An offering from really deep inside me. The song I’m proudest of on Virgin. Out next week. Shot by Talia Chetrit”.

Last week, in a Rolling Stone cover story, the singer recounted how she wrote Man of the Year in 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”.

“I have this picture staring at myself. I was blonde [at the time]. It scared me what I saw. I didn’t understand it.

“But I felt something bursting out of me. It was crazy. It was something jagged. There was this violence to it.”

The singer also revealed in the interview, she now describes herself as “in the middle gender-­wise".

The makeshift top in this new image shares a visual resemblance to the outfit Lorde wore to the Met Gala earlier this month.

After a four-year hiatus the Green Light singer returned to the high profile fashion fundraiser event sporting a silver floating bandeau top, matching suit jacket and maxi skirt by American design Thom Browne.

Lorde attends the 2025 Met Gala Celebrating Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. Photo/ Kevin Mazur for Getty Images.

Virgin, Lorde’s fourth album, will be released on June 27. In an email to her database announcing the album, the Auckland-born singer said she was “proud and scared” of the soon-to-be-released work.

“The colour of the album is clear. Like bathwater, windows, ice, spit. Full transparency. The language is plain and unsentimental. The sounds are the same wherever possible.”

Lorde said she was “trying to see myself, all the way through. I was trying to make a document that reflected my femininity: raw, primal, innocent, elegant, openhearted, spiritual, masc”.

The first single from Virgin, What Was That, was released on April 24.