In a candid new interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Grammy Award-winning artist Lorde (Ella Yelich-O’Connor) shared intimate details of her journey over the past few years. The 27-year-old New Zealand singer discussed her transformative experiences with psychedelic therapy, her battle with an eating disorder, and her evolving perspective on gender identity.
Perhaps most unexpectedly, she revealed a surprising connection she felt to Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s infamous sex tape, viewing it as an emblem of freedom rather than scandal. These revelations arrive alongside news of her upcoming album, Virgin, set for release on June 27, 2025, marking her first full-length project since 2021’s Solar Power.
Lorde, the singer-songwriter known for her haunting melodies and powerful lyrics, opened up about her psychedelic therapy journey and how it sparked unexpected revelations, including one that led her to watch the infamous Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee tape.
“I watched it after my second psychedelic therapy session,” Lorde revealed. “I found it to be so beautiful. Maybe it sounds crazy, but I saw love. Real, raw love.”
From 2022 to 2024, Lorde turned to MDMA and psilocybin therapy to confront her lifelong stage fright, a fear rooted in her early performances in community theaters at age five. This therapeutic method, gaining traction in mental health circles, pairs controlled doses of psychedelics with psychotherapy to address conditions like anxiety. For Lorde, the results were profound, reshaping her connection to her music and physical self.
Describing a session where she played her 2017 hit “Supercut,” she told Rolling Stone,
“All of a sudden there was a hook around my guts and everyone in the room was having the same feeling, [like] there’d been a huge pressure change. It made me realize how much I love and kind of need that very deep, visceral response to feel my music.”
Beyond performance, the therapy fostered a newfound appreciation for her body:
“I understood it. I was like, ‘These arms climbed the jungle gym. And they held an award on a TV show.’ I began to enjoy the complexity and ruggedness.”
One of the interview’s most striking moments came when Lorde recounted watching Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s notorious sex tape after a 2023 therapy session. Far from seeing it as a tawdry relic, she found it unexpectedly moving.
“For reasons I can’t explain, I found it to be so beautiful,” she said. “I saw two people that were so in love with each other, and there was this purity. They were so free. And I just was like, ‘Whoa. Being this free comes with danger.’”
This perspective stands in contrast to the tape’s grim history. Stolen from the couple’s home in the mid-1990s and distributed without consent, it sparked a legal battle. It caused lasting trauma, especially for Anderson, whose past as a Playboy model was leveraged against her. Lorde’s reframing of the footage as a symbol of liberated love highlights the introspective lens her therapy has cultivated.
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But the tape wasn’t the only thing Lorde discovered on her healing journey. Over the past two years, the singer has undergone guided psychedelic therapy, using MDMA and psilocybin to tackle long-held fears, especially stage fright.
“I was finally performing without fear,” she shared. “It was like my body remembered how much I love connecting through music. The therapy helped me feel that in my core.”
Lorde also opened up about her struggles with an eating disorder during the 2022 tour for Solar Power.
“I’m having this really amazing, rich experience of playing the shows and meeting these kids [her fans], and [yet] I’m also looking at the pictures afterward and feeling deep loathing at the sight of my beautiful, tiny tummy,” she admitted. At her lowest, she felt “incredibly hungry and frail.”
Her recovery began when she abandoned obsessive calorie counting.
“Once I stopped doing that, I had all this energy for making stuff,” she explained. “I could see that if I cut that cord, maybe I would get something back that I needed to do my work. And it was totally true. Got it all back, and way more.”
Lorde’s self-discovery extends to her gender identity, which she described as increasingly fluid. When Chappell Roan asked if she identifies as non-binary, she replied,
“I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.”
She added,
“I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but there’s a part of me that is really resistant to boxing it up.”
This exploration, sparked in 2023 by trying on men’s jeans, has influenced her music. Collaborator Jim-E Stack urged her to weave this expansive identity into Virgin.
Set for release on June 27, 2025, Virgin promises to reflect Lorde’s recent evolution. The lead single, “What Was That,” hints at themes of healing and liberation drawn from her therapy and personal growth. The end of her eight-year relationship with Universal Music executive Justin Warren in 2023 further underscores this transition period.
Lorde’s Rolling Stone interview portrays an artist embracing vulnerability and renewal. Through psychedelic therapy, she has overcome stage fright and reconnected with her body and music. Her empathetic take on Anderson and Lee’s tape, alongside her fluid approach to gender, signals a broader shift in perspective—one that will likely resonate in Virgin.
