Lorde Says Her Eating Disorder Blocked ‘All of My Artistry’ & Fueled Fears She Would Never Make Music Again

At the end of June, Lorde returned after four years with Virgin, an LP full of some of the most intense, vulnerable songs she’s ever written. But not too long ago, she worried she’d never be able to make music again.

In an interview with BBC Radio 1 posted Tuesday (July 8), the pop star shared how her creative abilities were previously stifled by an unrelenting eating disorder — something she’s been open about overcoming throughout the Virgin rollout process. According to Lorde, her mind was once so consumed with being thin, she didn’t have any capacity left over for writing songs.

“At the beginning of 2023, I was just, like, not in a great way on a lot of levels,” she told host Jack Saunders. “I never felt more disconnected from my creativity. I hadn’t had an idea in a long time.”

“This was a period where all I was thinking about was trying to weigh as little as possible, and going to sleep thinking about food, and waking up thinking about food and exercise,” she continued. “That was my creative pursuit; that’s where it was all going. At the time I was like, ‘I need to stop doing this, because it’s blocking all of my artistry.’ Once that went away, it all started coming back.”

After taking time to focus on her well-being, Lorde was finally able to get back in the studio and produce Virgin, which dropped June 27 and debuts this week at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. On one of the album’s songs, “Broken Glass,” she dives into her struggles with body image, singing, “I spent my summer getting lost in math/ Making weight took all I had.”

The track has already become a notable fan favorite on the LP. But one song listeners have been loving in particular is album-closer “David,” which Lorde told Saunders she named in part after Michelangelo’s famous statue of the same name.

“I also thought a lot about David and Goliath and this story of power,” she explained. “Part of making this album was definitely coming to terms with the fact that there have been a lot of power dynamics in my life, and they’re not romantic most of the time. I’ve been working for a long time, and I’ve looked up at some man over and over and over. And I was just like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to let it rip here and say it all.'”

The Grammy winner was previously in a relationship with music executive Justin Warren, who is about 17 years her senior and works for Universal Music Group, the parent company of Lorde’s label, Republic Records. After about eight years together, Lorde revealed in a 2023 letter to fans that she was “living with heartbreak again.”

On “David,” she sings to an ex-partner, “I made you God ’cause it was all/ That I knew how to do/ But I don’t belong to anyone.”

And on BBC Radio 1, she added of the song, “It just felt like a really important bit of just being super real that needed to happen for me. I was like, ‘When I say this, then I’m free.'”

Watch Lorde’s full interview above.