Lorde’s slow-burn reveals of what the music from Virgin, her upcoming fourth album, will sound like have been as measured and carefully considered as the music videos that accompany them, all released about a month apart starting at the end of April. The latest being the Renell Medrano-directed video for “Hammer.” Which, despite being named as such, only mentions that word once, when Lorde sings, “When you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” But that’s one of the most impactful lines, laden with subtext, sexual innuendo—the idea that Lorde’s “hammer” is a metaphor for a dick and that she wants to “nail” everything in sight with it. At the same time, she’s plenty in touch with her feminine side on this track, too, shrugging of her “in heat” sentiments, “Don’t know if it’s love or if it’s ovulation.” After all, Lorde has talked quite a bit about her “gender-broadening” (see also: “Man of the Year”) journey while recording Virgin, and how, as she told Rolling Stone (and Chappell Roan), “I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.”
As it turns out, Lorde was giving her listeners yet another “Easter egg” (as she did with what she chose to wear to this year’s Met Gala), for that little aphorism also happens to be present on “Hammer” via the lyric, “Some days, I’m a woman, some days, I’m a man, oh.” Whatever she happens to be in this video, the aura she’s radiating (since Lorde loves to dissect auras) is one of total freedom and recklessness (complete with getting a tattoo on her arse in the woods, which is relevant to her pronouncement, “I’m making a wish when the needle goes in” [even if she’s referring to getting a piercing]). The kind of total freedom and recklessness that one feels during a period of revelation and self-discovery, a palpable shift in their lives. And while the term “coming of age” might generally be associated with teenagers painfully transitioning into adulthood, there are plenty of other “sea changes” in life that warrant use of the term. Including one’s late twenties into their early thirties, which is what Lorde is currently experiencing. Not only that, but she’s also about to embark on her “Saturn return year,” as she turns twenty-nine on November 7th. And, talking of Scorpio season, Lorde is in her watery element throughout the “Hammer” video, swimming like a fish (or scorpion) and looking like one too when she’s literally caught in the net.
Indeed, despite describing the song as “an ode to city life and horniness,” the accompanying visual has a pastoral quality thanks to being shot entirely in Hampstead Heath, of which Lorde commented, “I said can we pull an all nighter in the Heath and Renell said 🙂↔️🙂↔️🤞🖲️🔊⛓️🤝🌙🦋🌸💋🔨.” Perhaps her core reason for wanting to shoot it there is because you can’t spell “Hammer” or “Hampstead” without “ham.” And because Hampstead makes for the perfect backdrop to convey the feeling of summer. In this case, coming of age in the summer (and in the style of an A24 movie). But before the sweltering, sticky vibe of the season is conveyed visually or lyrically, Medrano opens on a shot of Lorde’s two braids (themselves featuring multiple braids for a “meta” hairstyle), slowly zooming out to show a pigeon on each shoulder. Of course, there are far more pigeons than that which end up surrounding Lorde at various points throughout the video, their shared, “at one with Lorde” presence being among the most memorable imagery of “Hammer.” And, of course, one can’t think of a “pigeon lady” without thinking of the pigeon lady: Brenda Fricker in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. An inspiration to us all, including, evidently, Lorde.
Such a strong start to the video is matched by the memorable start of the song itself. For it’s a low-pitch sort of humming sound that commences “Hammer,” once again co-produced by Jim E-Stack (who also worked on Lorde’s previous two Virgin singles, “What Was That” and “Man of the Year”). This repeated sound establishes a moody, irascible type of vibe (and one that gets under the listener’s skin). The kind characterized by Lorde’s opening line to “Glory and Gore,” “There’s a humming in the restless summer air.” Lorde begins “Hammer” in a similar fashion with the line, “There’s a heat in the pavement, my mercury’s raising.” In other words, “it’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes.” Which is exactly what Lorde does about thirteen seconds into the video, when we first see the image of her naked and caught up in a net suspended in some abandoned shed-looking environment. But leave it to a Scorpio to treat a net like an average hammock.
Soon after, about fifty-one seconds into the video, Lorde is once again in “no clothes, no problem” mode as she swims carefreely in one of the Hampstead Heath Ponds, joined by a couple of other chums on a dock as she’s given a puff of a cigarette (what kind of “cigarette” is left to the viewer’s own discretion). Bent over and dipping the top of her head into the water while on the dock, Lorde also makes one realize that Gaby Hoffman is her doppelgänger. Not just physically, but in terms of their seemingly shared philosophy on their respective jobs. As Hoffman put it to The Guardian in 2021, “I really love my job, but I don’t want to do it that often.” Lorde clearly feels the same way, dipping in and out of her “famous singer” life every four years, a now well-established pattern. Perhaps this is why she sings, “It’s a beautiful life [Ace of Base would agree], so I play truant/I jerk tears and they pay me to do it, oh.”
In any event, at the one-minute, thirteen-second mark, the song’s tone shifts from decided slow jam to unabashed dance floor banger (in the same spirit as “What Was That”) as the series of scenes shown starts to become more fast-paced…and more “risk-oriented.” Making out (so probably having sex) in someone’s car in the middle of a field at night, running in front of that car as the headlights chase her through the fields, getting that abovementioned tattoo on her backside—that sort of thing.
With the rhythm having picked up, there’s also a scene in that shed-looking place (maybe one that’s altogether separate from where the net is) featuring Lorde and a slew of other people who seem to be enjoying an impromptu warehouse rave, which is probably why Lorde needs to take a sip from her water bottle. As in the water bottle. The one that served as the very first image she chose to share (via her new profile picture on Instagram) as a means to kick off this era. “It has like a magical quality to me,” she would tell Rolling Stone. And, even though she bought it in 2023, it already does look like an “artifact” because of how dinged and “well-used” it is. In fact, an artifact is exactly what she calls it. In addition to a “talisman,” and one of the select few that helped propel Virgin’s creative direction forward. While dancing in that makeshift warehouse, Lorde smokes another cigarette in the midst of jumping up and down, reminding listeners of the “What Was That” lyric “I remember saying then, ‘This is the best cigarette of my life.’” That’s certainly what it seems like in this particular scene.
As for the net image that keeps coming back (much like the pigeon one), we see Lorde writhe more and more forcefully inside of it, as though trying to break free. Trying to no longer be confined or hemmed in. Needless to say, it’s a symbolic nod to the way in which she’s chosen to break free of the gender limitations previously imposed upon her, but which she’s willfully cast aside.
And where she opted to kick the video off with the pigeon lady moment, she concludes it with herself settling into the net, as though living in this “skin” is her own choice now. And it very much is. She’s “come of age” yet again. And to do so, she describes it best in the final lines of the song (which are very Carrie Fisher-inspired), “It’s a fucked-up world, been to hell and back/But I’ve sent you a postcard from the edge.” That postcard being, for all intents and purposes, the video for “Hammer.”
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