Lorde Marks 'Virgin' Anniversary With 49 'Xrays' Demos From the Album

Lorde marked the one-year anniversary of Virgin by sharing nearly 50 demos from the album, as well as shared a personal note about the making of the LP.

“I decided something had to be done about that. To be honest I haven’t really known how to talk about Virgin since it came out. I’d thought I was accustomed and even a bit desensitized to marketing and commodifying my feelings at this point in my life, but sharing Virgin felt raw and exposing in a new way.* I interviewed poorly, couldn’t write here, haven’t posted much. I think I needed to just be quiet for a while. It also makes sense to me that such physical work would resist being trapped with language. But some time has passed, and I wanna try to find the words.”

At a newly launched “XRAYS” page on her official website — in addition to photographs, notes, artwork ideas and more from the Virgin era — Lorde shared 49 “skeletons” of what would become the Virgin songs. (Although Lorde previously hinted that some of her favorite Virgin-era songs didn’t make the final track list, those tracks weren’t included in the XRAYS demos.)

“Last year we played around with making an album worth of these skeleton versions, cool composites of a few different versions,” Lorde wrote. “But on Sunday night, I realized true X-rays of Virgin would be realer, funnier, more revealing of crookedness and slant.”