Lorde Says She ‘Came Into Some Understanding’ About Herself When She Taped Her Chest for the First Time in 2023

Lorde reflected on the moment she had a revelation about her gender identity.

In a DAZED magazine cover story published on Monday, Sept. 8, the pop star revealed that she “came into some understanding” about herself when she taped her chest for the first time in 2023.

Lorde, 28, noted that she knew it was “going to be a tricky one and that I wasn’t making it easy” when she said she was “in the middle gender-wise” in a May Rolling Stone cover story.

The “Current Affairs” singer then noted that she thinks she “misquoted” saying that Chappell Roan asked her if she was “nonbinary.”

“I feel really bad. She said, very sweetly, something like, ‘So your pronouns are changing?’ Lorde recalled, before noting that they aren’t “right now.”

“But some days, I can’t wear women’s clothes. I’ve had to figure out how to have my make-up done in a way that doesn’t make me feel trapped or tight or like the wrong thing. Now I just tell people, ‘Treat it like male grooming,'” she said.

Lorde said she had “no idea there would be days when I felt totally out-of-body, and it was because I was wearing women’s clothes when it wasn’t the right thing.”

For her, “it’s all a journey.”

“I have no idea where it’s gonna go; it doesn’t feel like I’ve arrived anywhere permanent at all. I’m sure it’ll keep unfurling, the way these things do,” said Lorde.

It took her “by surprise” how much “shame” she felt.

But the “What Was That” singer had a revelation when she taped her chest for the first time.

“I came into some understanding about myself, and felt a very pure version of myself present. I think it was the end of 2023,” said Lorde.

At the time, she was just beginning to write the song “Man of the Year.”

“I’d really been feeling this stuff bubble up and talking about it a lot in therapy,” Lorde recalled. “We started writing the song, and I saw this TV performance of it [in my mind’s eye], and it wasn’t even finished.”

She added: “And in the performance I saw myself in jeans, no shirt. And I thought about how I would actually do that on TV. It wasn’t a bra. I had this roll of tape and grabbed it, put my jeans on, taped up, and saw myself – and was like, ‘F—, that’s me.’ Suddenly, I could see it. It was scary.”

Ultimately, Lorde felt like herself, despite not knowing she wanted it to be her.

“But now I feel so beautiful in both ways. I feel vulnerable and calm. It really tripped me out,” she said.

In a May Rolling Stone cover story, Lorde said she felt “in the middle gender-wise” rather than identifying strictly as a man or a woman.

She also recalled a conversation about her gender identity with Roan, 27.

“She was like, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’ And 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,” the Grammy-winning singer recalled telling “The Giver” musician.

Lorde also reminisced about a moment in 2023 when she tried on a pair of men’s jeans at a store and sent a photo to her collaborator Jim-E Stack.

“He was like, ‘I want to see the you that’s in this picture represented in the music.’ This was before I had any sense of my gender broadening at all,” she said.

Lorde’s album Virgin is out now.