Contents
The Lorde’s Virgin birth came on June 27, and it was born with sin. The singer’s new album is a husky, industrial dance-pop record filled with her signature angst — and “Current Affairs” is perhaps the angstiest. She sings about experiencing emotional distress from an illicit relationship, but instead of admitting it to other people, she blames her sadness on “current affairs.” Interspersed with the refrain (“Blame it on current affairs, current affairs”) is a sample intoning, “Girl, your pussy good, it grip me good a me fi tell you.” The voice in the sample is low, deep, and a little out of pocket. It also plays into some real-life gossip about an implied illicit affair, spurred by a TikTok from singer Kacy Hill involving her ex, producer Jim E-Stack, and Lorde. The supposed drama has turned “Current Affairs” into Virgin’s breakout track. Throw in a Pamela Anderson sex-tape reference, which reignites a whole previous controversy from earlier in the album cycle, and you may need some of this explained to you.
What is “Current Affairs” about?
In “Current Affairs,” Lorde is mulling over a relationship she feels guilty about. “My bed is on fire / Mama, I’m so scared,” she sings on the chorus. “Don’t know how to come back / Once I get out on the edge / He spit in my mouth like / He’s saying a prayer.” She then adds, “But now I’m crying on the phone / Swearing nothing’s wrong / Blame it on / Current affairs.” “Affairs” has a double meaning — she is falsely blaming “current affairs” for her emotional state to her mother on the phone, and she is letting the audience know the real reason she’s crying is over her “affair” that we’ve all been hearing about on the rest of the track.
What’s the TikTok drama with Kacy Hill?
Hill previously dated producer Jim E-Stack, and he worked with Lorde on the album, as previously mentioned. The day before Virgin’s release, Hill made a TikTok set to Lorde’s single “Man of the Year” with overlay text implying that Lorde broke up her relationship with Stack, ending their six-and-a-half-year relationship. “Let’s hear it for the man who ended a 6.5 year relationship while making a girl’s album then started dating her,” Hill wrote.
This is not Stack’s first time working with Lorde — the two first met in 2022, and he produced both her version of “Take Me to the River” for the 2024 Talking Heads tribute album and her instantly iconic verse on Charli XCX’s “Girl, so confusing remix.” Stack and Lorde began working together on Virgin in 2023. “She had just gone through a breakup of a very long-term, significant relationship,” Stack told GQ of the collaboration. “So I went to New York and we just started making ideas [to] see what happened.”
Click here to preview your posts with PRO themes ››
Who is Kacy Hill?
Hill is a singer who was discovered by Kanye West in 2015. You might know her best from her feature on Travis Scott’s “90210.” In May 2024, she released her fourth album, Bug, which “became an outlet to say what I had been silently feeling in my relationship and life as a whole,” she told Rolling Stone. Stack regularly worked on Hill’s albums, co-producing her entire 2021 album Simple, Sweet, and Smiling. His last song with Hill is 2024’s “My Day Off,” off Bug. On her single “You Know I Love You Still,” she sings about a difficult breakup: “If there was a way to make / This go away I would do it all / Again / By now, I know better / Should let you go forever / But know I never can.”
How are people reacting to the TikTok rumor?
There has been a lot of speculation about Lorde and Stack’s relationship following Hill’s TikTok. For Lorde, the new discussion has dredged up unsubstantiated but similar rumors about her connection with Jack Antonoff, who produced 2017’s Melodrama. At the time, there was speculation that the two had an affair while he was with Lena Dunham, which was most famously proliferated through an unhinged PowerPoint presentation.
What’s up with that sample?
“Morning Love,” by Jamaican dancehall artist Dexta Daps, is featured prominently on the chorus of “Current Affairs.” The 2014 track is a blissed-out reggae cut about how happy Dexta is with his girlfriend. Lorde samples, “Girl, your pussy good, it grip me good a me fi tell you,” which functions similarly on both tracks as a fun and evocative background voice in the chorus.
And what was that about Pamela Anderson?
Lorde is obsessed with Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s leaked sex tape. “I found it to be so beautiful,” she said in her RS cover story. “And maybe it’s fucked up that I watched it, but I saw two people that were so in love with each other, and there was this purity. They were jumping off this big boat … They were like children. They were so free. And I just was like, ‘Whoa. Being this free comes with danger.’” Her comments on the sex tape were received poorly online, with Jezebel writing, “Frankly, the admission is getting a side-eye from me.” On “Current Affairs,” Lorde appears to sing about the tape on the second verse. “All alone in my room, watching the tape of their honeymoon,” she sings. “On the boat, it was pure and true, then the film came out.” Given that the Anderson-Lee sex tape takes place on a boat, it seems likely that Lorde is referring to that tape as a way of comparing her secret affair to their accidentally public sex.
Anything else I need to know?
Lorde told everybody that this was melodrama. She’s just keeping her word.
