The Gender-Broadening of Lorde: “Man of the Year” 

Like her friend (though the two haven’t been spotted together lately), Taylor Swift, Lorde has been fond of wielding “Easter eggs” in the lead-up to releasing her second single from Virgin, “Man of the Year.” It began at this year’s Met Gala, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” when Lorde showed up in what has been described as a “gravity-defying” bandeau top designed to echo the look of a cummerbund. Except, you know, placed on her tits instead of her waist. Designed by Thom Brown, the look was characterized, ironically enough, as an example of Lorde “embrac[ing] feminine flair” (per Women’s Wear Daily). Though her intent was clearly to embrace both her masc and fem sides, with the former shining through via minimalist maquillage and the “taped chest” nod to “Man of the Year.” 

Of course, fans wouldn’t fully understand that nod until seeing the Grant Singer-directed video, during which the crux of the “plot” is Lorde removing her shirt and taping down her breasts. Something about her being alone in an empty apartment and “coming to terms with herself” echoing certain scenes and motifs in Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” video. Another “Easter egg” that Lorde provided about the existence of this song and its theme was mentioning to Rolling Stone that being asked how she “identifies” now based on her sudden “in touch-ness” with her masculine side was something that also came up in conversation with Chappell Roan. Inquiring as to whether she feels nonbinary at present, Lorde’s response was, “‘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.” Instead, “Man of the Year” is all about letting every facet of both genders pour out of her, expanding and contracting as the mood strikes her. So no, don’t get too excited about labeling her as being on a “trans journey” just yet. And yes, for some, including trans people, it might come across as “vexing” for Lorde to “play with gender” in this way. To be a “trans tease” or even a queerbaiter, as it were. To those people, Lorde was quick to preempt their naysaying by also telling Rolling Stone, “I don’t think that [my identity] is radical, to be honest. I see these incredibly brave young people, and it’s complicated. Making the expression privately is one thing, but I want to make very clear that I’m not trying to take any space from anyone who has more on the line than me. Because I’m, comparatively, in a very safe place as a wealthy, cis, white woman.”

And besides, gender-bending has long been synonymous with pop music. Or at least pop music of substance. Take, for instance, David Bowie (who, yes, is as much pop as he is rock). The chameleon who once prophesized that Lorde would be the “future of music.” As it turned out, he was right on the mark—despite Lorde’s technically scant output (a testament to her measured, methodical approach to album-making). Perhaps acknowledging his faith in her, Lorde has taken to the gender-bending, gender-expanding (or “gender-broadening,” as she likes to call it) method for conveying a key message of her music during this era. A message that reiterates, like Madonna before her, that a woman can be as male as she is female (and, likewise, a male as female as he is male). Both sides are contained within each of us, though some are less willing to tap into it than others (*cough cough* right-wing zealots…who prefer to cross-dress in private à la J. Edgar Hoover).  

For Lorde, going off birth control was an intrinsic part of this realization. As she described it, “I felt like stopping taking my birth control, I had cut some sort of cord between myself and this regulated femininity. It sounds crazy, but I felt that all of a sudden, I was off the map of femininity. And I totally believed that that allowed things to open up.” And what they opened up to was “Man of the Year,” a song that was at least germinally formed at GQ’s Men of the Year ceremony back in 2023. A ceremony that Lorde attended in what she described to Triple J as a generic “hot girl dress.” At the time, she was also blonde, adding to this effect of Lorde trying to fit into the mold of what “conventional” femininity is “supposed to be.” She understood then that she saw herself as a man of the year, and wanted to make a song that reflected that sentiment. Here it bears noting that, in contrast to the abovementioned Swift, who famously has a song called “The Man” from Lover, Lorde is not calling out the double standards that exist for women and not men on “Man of the Year,” but rather, asserting herself as “that dick” (a logical foil for “that bitch”). And she’ll swing her polla whenever she feels like it, without asking for permission, or bringing up the fact that being a woman puts her at an automatic disadvantage. 

Instead, “Man of the Year,” despite its title, is all about the advantages of being “both.” In the opening verse, Lorde alludes to the ultra laddish movie, Fight Club, when she sings, “You met me at a really strange time in my life/Take my knife and I cut the cord/My babe can’t believe I’ve become someone else/Someone more like myself.” This verse, when said in the video, doesn’t arrive until after a close-up on Lorde’s face pans out dramatically, almost leading one to believe that they’re about to see some unexpected “reveal.” But the only “shocking” thing to behold is the sight of Lorde sitting in an empty apartment wearing “man jeans” and a white t-shirt (or, as LDR would bill it, “Blue jeans, white shirt”). To accent the masculinity she wants to radiate, Lorde sits the way a man does: legs spread apart (a.k.a. manspreading) and arm slung over the back of the chair. All confidence and aloofness—yet another dichotomy. 

She begins to remove her shirt as she leads into the chorus (or rather, a slightly tweaked version of it for the purpose of the intro), “Who’s gon’ love me like this?/Oh, who could give me lightness?/Way he flow down through me/Love me like this/Now I’m broken open/Let’s hear it for the man of the year.” It’s a far cry from what Deniece Williams meant when she said, “Let’s hear it for the boy.” 

After taping her chest, a shirtless Lorde then walks toward an area of the loft that has been filled with dirt, boasting at one point, “Now I go ‘bout my day/Ridin’ it like a wave/Playin’ it any way I want/Swish mouthwash, jerk off” (that latter phrase generally only used when referring to male masturbation). In short, she’s living as carefreely as a man. More specifically, the man that’s flowing through her (cue the image of Tobias Fünke’s The Man Inside Me dust jacket). And that man feels like rolling around in the dirt (in a scene that slightly recalls Kesha’s visualizer for “Fine Line”). 

To a certain extent, Lorde is conveying the metaphor that one must be willing to get in the trenches—down and dirty, so to speak—if they genuinely want to stand for something. To hold true to their beliefs and live them openly. Letting the dirt wash over her, Lorde reaches a point at the end of the video where she’s fully spent, having exhausted (or perhaps exorcised) the masculine side of herself. Lying still with her bare back to the camera, it makes one think of the days when Lorde was praised for staying “covered up” as a teenage girl (much like Billie Eilish). Looking back on that time, Lorde remarked to Rolling Stone, “I was up on a pedestal because I wasn’t employing the same tools. And I remember being like, ‘No, no, I will take my clothes off one day. Be ready.’ I’ve always known that having those qualities ascribed to me so young [meant that] me being more open with my body, with my sexuality, [would] carry real weight and agitate and alienate.” 

And that is exactly what “Man of the Year” aims to and will do. Even after so many decades of boundary-pushing in pop music vis-à-vis playing with concepts of gender identity, the cyclical return to the dominance of conservative ideologies necessitates a song and visual like this. And Lorde is willing to die on that (dirt) hill for the sake of her self-expression, and to encourage others who have bottled up certain “opposite gender” aspects of themselves to let it loose. To flow freely.