Lorde marked one year since Virgin's release by dropping 49 unreleased demos on a brand-new "XRAYS" page on her official website, accompanied by a letter to fans that revealed personal struggles during the album's creation.
"On Sunday night I was putting my clothes away and realized Virgin had been out for almost a year," Lorde wrote in her newsletter. "I decided something had to be done about that."
The Kiwi artist addressed her relative silence since the album dropped. "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."
Lorde revealed the personal difficulties she faced while creating the album: a breakup, an eating disorder, and a PMDD diagnosis. She turned that pain into art that changed her.
"I concentrated on singing to myself the way I needed to be sung to," she explained. "Gradually I put music and language to old stories I had been scared to tell. I purged them out of me and felt lighter. Living in these songs had an incantatory effect. I felt myself change."
The 49 unreleased "skeleton" demos offer an intimate look at Virgin's creative process, showing the raw structure of songs before they became the fully-formed tracks on the album. They function as sonic X-rays: you see the skeleton beneath the surface.
Lorde's openness extends beyond bonus content. She is inviting listeners into her healing process, marking a shift from her earlier caution about sharing her work publicly.
