Lorde's latest album, Virgin, is her first in years to not feature Jack Antonoff as a producer. The New Zealand-born singer began working with Antonoff on her second album, Melodrama. While she said she still values their relationship, she did not think she should work with him on Virgin. Here's why she felt it was time to move on.
Lorde partnered with producer Jim-E Stack on Virgin. She worked with Antonoff on her last two albums, Melodrama and Solar Power. She ruefully spoke about working with him while he also collaborates with many major pop singers.
This didn't lead to any resentment, though. She described Antonoff as a "positive, supportive collaborator," but still wanted to move on from working with him.
"I had always seen her as an outlier pop star, this A-tier pop star, who had the success and accolades that came with that but didn't play the game," Stack said. "I just admired her tremendously."
Lorde and Antonoff had a close personal and professional relationship. She said she came to view him as a family member.
"Jack is the best," she told iHeartRadio. "He is one of the strangest people I've ever met in my life. He is so himself, which I love, and we just had the best time hanging out at his house, and at different studios around the place. But for the most part we wrote the record just in a bedroom in his house, sitting around the piano. But yeah, he's a nut. He's like my family at this point."
She shared how they spent their free time together while recording.
"There was one point before things got really serious, and we had a deadline, where we would just go out for these ridiculous dinners, and order cocktails, and get like a giant platter of seafood. We'd be at the nicest restaurants in New York, and we were just like these scumbags, like he just wears the worst clothes all the time. We were just so kind of gross. I feel like that's a real hallmark of this process is us just eating food that's way nicer than we look like we can afford."
Rumors even flew of a romantic relationship between the two, which Lorde has denounced as "sexist."
On Virgin, Lorde hopes to share a "really essential, pure" version of herself with listeners. She believes it could change the way people view her.
"There's going to be a lot of people who don't think I'm a good girl anymore, a good woman. It's over," she said. "It will be over for a lot of people, and then for some people, I will have arrived. I'll be where they always hoped I'd be."