Lorde has opened up about her past body image issues, and how she is embracing herself in this new era. During a new interview with Document Journal, the Kiwi pop star spoke about returning with her first single in four years, ‘What Was That’. The track is the first taste of her fourth album ‘Virgin’, which is due for release on June 27.

Lorde reflected on her feelings and experiences while making her previous record, 2021’s ‘Solar Power’. Recalling that summer, the singer told the outlet: “There was this feeling of, ‘Okay, we’re back out here, and everything’s totally fine!’ – and it was just so not the case. “It was all still really in process, and there would be these layers of grief that would come through, and there was such a collective anger, and so much trauma coming to the surface.” Remembering the relationship she had with her appearance at this time, Lorde added: “Then on top of that, I had made my body very small, because I thought that that was what you did as a woman and a woman on display.

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.” She continued: “I was very weak.

I look back now, and I don’t have that same feeling of floating away. I eat as much as I want and need now. I wasn’t very embodied.

I often would think about not eating very much as I felt like every bite of food I had was stolen. I was like, ‘Hang on, this has gotten weird’.” Explaining her newfound positivity regarding her body, and how she has now overcome these issues, Lorde 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 byproduct of that process of fully coming into my body and feeling the fullness of my power. It’s cool to be back in that place of, like, the portal opening and the weight.” She went on: “I’m myself. All these parts of me are represented in a bunch of different ways.

I’m not hiding from myself. I’m not stealing from myself […] But 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’.” Lorde told the interviewer that she “just felt so like myself” when performing the ‘Girl, So Confusing’ remix with Charli XCX at the festival last month.