Lorde is opening up about her ever-evolving understanding of gender—and as always, she’s doing it in her own poetic, slightly cryptic, and refreshingly self-aware way.
The Royals hitmaker, now 28, recently got candid in a new interview with Rolling Stone, where she shared that her gender identity has become “way more expansive” over the years.
It’s a theme that even found its way into her upcoming album Virgin, which kicks off with the lyric, “Some days I’m a woman / Some days I’m a man.” That line had some friends, like fellow artist Chappell Roan, sending curious texts.
“She was like, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’” Lorde shared.
“I was like, ‘I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.’ I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but there’s a part of me that is really resistant to boxing it up.”
In typical Lorde fashion, her take on identity is less about neat labels and more about honoring the grey areas.
While she does describe herself as “in the middle gender-wise,” she’s not planning to change her pronouns and still identifies as a cis woman. And she’s mindful not to let her journey overshadow the voices of trans and nonbinary folks navigating far riskier roads.
“I don’t think that [my identity] is radical, to be honest,” she said. “I see these incredibly brave young people, and it’s complicated.”
She continued, “Making the expression privately is one thing, but I want to make very clear that I’m not trying to take any space from anyone who has more on the line than me. Because I’m, comparatively, in a very safe place as a wealthy, cis, white woman.”
Her journey toward this deeper understanding? It wasn’t sparked by a single moment, but rather a slow-burning evolution tied to her health and personal choices. Lorde shared that she’s been focusing on both her mental and physical well-being—an effort that included stepping away from the birth control she’d been using for a decade.
“I felt like stopping taking my birth control, I had cut some sort of cord between myself and this regulated femininity,” she explained.
“It sounds crazy, but I felt that all of a sudden, I was off the map of femininity. And I totally believed that that allowed things to open up.”
