What Lorde Watched, Read, and Listened to in 2025

Lorde, Rachel Handler · 2025-12-01T05:00:49.625-05:00

For New York Magazine’s first annual “Culturati 50 Issue,” we surveyed Lindsay Lohan, Parker Posey, Lola Tung, and other culture-makers who have shaped entertainment this year on what they watched, read, and listened to in 2025. See the full survey results here.

After several years out of the spotlight, during which she experienced heartbreak, overcame an eating disorder, broadened her view of her gender, and wrote it all down, Lorde returned with one of the most sonically singular albums of 2025. Virgin is raw and bold, with songs about sex and lust, body dysmorphia, mommy issues, and pregnancy scares. The accompanying Ultrasound Tour is just as stripped down and sensual, with Lorde wearing duct tape and boxer briefs and wading into the crowd to break down the boundaries between audience and artist.

Introducing the Culturati 50

What were your favorite movies of the year?

I barely watch movies. I’ve honestly seen probably sub-150 movies in my life. I’m severely underwatched. For me, it’s a big undertaking. It’s like a social excursion or something. You meet all these people; I don’t really do it casually. And I don’t own a TV. But I’m rocked by one movie a year max, and I think about that movie all year and everything else I watch doesn’t permeate.

I loved One Battle After Another. I felt awake. Paul Thomas Anderson is so good at balancing raw humanity with something funny. I’m a reader more than anything. So I’m really reading that script as I watch it: “Lunatics, haters and punk trash.” That’s so good.

Best TV shows?

The White Lotus, half of The Rehearsal, Dying for Sex, and two episodes of The Studio. That’s all the TV I watched this year. I’ve watched all the seasons of White Lotus. The first season was hard to top, but I’ve completed the mission, so something’s working on me. It just feels like one of the few shared cultural events that we have. I wanna know what happened, you know? I loved the incest story line. I was like, “You guys are all prudes. Come on. Let’s go for it. Bring the teeth! Freak us out, Mike!”

Favorite albums or songs?

Baby, by Dijon. I’m increasingly impressed by people who are making work that feels distinctly human. It’s pretty hard these days to outpace the algorithm as culture makers. And that album felt like something that it would take the algorithm a while to become human enough to imitate. I feel his blood flowing through it. It’s a guttural, raw, big, sexy swing. He’s a similar age to me, and he’s obviously had a baby, but it’s an age where you’re starting to look at your world a bit differently. Anyone making a work of pop about parenting — I’m into that. It’s sick.

I’m always running away or running towards music, desperately needing to or not to be consuming it. I listened to a lot to cleanse the palate. And to listen to my friends as well. True Blue’s Star Witness — she’s so cool. I listened to Chanel Beads ’cause they were out with us on tour and I loved them. Hollis, James K. Just things that felt like their own world: Blood Orange’s Essex Honey, obviously. Big Thief’s Double Infinity. I didn’t listen to as much pop music, because when those are the waters you’re swimming in, you’re looking elsewhere.

The books you couldn’t put down?

I read all day. I read physical books, and I probably read one and a half books a week. I read before I go to bed, when I wake up, in hair and makeup. I read at the airport. There’s a through-line in the books I read this year — they have blood running through them in a really visceral way. I feel a real hunger emerging around the experiences of older women and this very textured, sometimes ugly path being walked by women ahead of me. It feels like a life force.

I loved Ruth, by Kate Riley, and Wave of Blood, by Ariana Reines. Ariana Reines is one of those modern voices who I would be bereft without. She does this heroic work of metabolizing our world for me. Plus Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun, by Jackie Wang, and The Motherload, by Sarah Hoover, for that pure tabloid high. I had never read Walt Whitman, not being from America, and I’m trying to understand the American project a bit more, so I read some of him. I read so much Frank O’Hara. It felt really good when I was away from New York to read these little compact poems. They’re exquisite and so generative for me. I feel like I was constantly reading After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, which is a sort of self-help, spirituality text that I’ve returned to over the last couple years. I took a dip towards faith-based reading. I was feeling like I needed to reach outside of myself. I read this great book called A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith [from editors Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler]. It’s fabulous. I got quite existential, and that’s when Whitman got in there. I bopped out of that and went to all the memoirs of New York women in their 30s and 40s. It almost scratches the itch of a blog or a magazine. Then I read the new Patricia Lockwood. I’m always happy to go into her zany vortex.

Plays or musicals that stuck with you?

People kept telling me I needed to see John Proctor Is the Villain. I went right before Sadie Sink left the play. I was rocked by Sadie and thrashing to “Green Light.” It’s been eight years since “Green Light” came out — seeing them know how to use that song in the play was indescribably moving. So was seeing the girls dance — in a way that is sort of reminiscent of me, if I should be so bold — because I could see on their bodies that it was really beautiful and meaningful. My relationship with how I move has not always been so easy. It’s involuntary. It comes out of me and it’s strange. I know that. So it was so cool to see this and be like, Oh, it’s strange but it’s also beautiful. It absolutely changed the way that I thought about my own movement. I was like, Yeah, this has value. Seeing a young woman move like this.

Best art show?

Vital Signs: Artists and the Body at the MoMA was so good. I saw the Wolfgang Tillmans show at the Centre Pompidou and the beautiful, original Diane Arbus show in L.A., which was insane. My friend Phil Reid in London had a very sick group show with a Gray Wielebinski next to a Vivian Lynn. I saw an Alice Coltrane show at the Hammer and a great drawing show at Champ Lacombe in London. I’m usually seeking out an exhibition that I am specifically interested in and asking art friends what they like. I try to see as much as I can. It’s the best antidote I’ve found to whatever it is I’m doing to my brain the rest of the day.

How about podcasts?

Berlant & Novak till one of us dies. I’m a longtime Poog listener. It’s everything I would hope someone was doing with a podcast. Can it really be explained? Those of us who know, we just know. It’s for us. I’m friends with Kate and I am able to separate the art from the artist and listen to her religiously and also go to dinner with her. I’m not a huge podcaster, but I’ll also listen to How Long Gone or occasionally Call Her Daddy. But I sort of make an exception for those.

Most memorable concert?

My two nights at Glastonbury were unspeakably fabulous. Virgin had just come out, and we had played in the morning, and we had this huge feeling of release. It’s so vast and also so intimate. All of my friends were there. It was a much-needed catharsis. This year, I also saw Four Tet, who I love. Charli XCX was sick. We danced for 12 hours.

Pick your Pedro Pascal.

⬜ Eddington⬜ Materialists☑️ The Last of Us⬜ Fantastic Four

Was there a song of the summer this year?

⬜ Yes☑️ No: Justin Bieber’s “Daisies” was the closest we came. When I heard it, it just felt cute and alive and cool. It ticked all the boxes for me. It has to be flirty! I should be so lucky as to make a song of the summer. I don’t think I really make that type of music, but maybe I do. I’m happy to leave that to others.

Favorite cameo on The Studio?

⬜ Zoë Kravitz⬜ Martin Scorsese⬜ Ron Howard⬜ Anthony Mackie⬜ Olivia Wilde⬜ Zac Efron☑️ Sarah Polley

Did The Rehearsal make you more or less scared to go on a plane?

⬜ 1 Less scared⬜ 2⬜ 3☑️ 4⬜ 5 More scared

It did freak me out. The guy had been banned from all of the dating apps! But I had to give it a four because I didn’t finish. I loved what I saw and I don’t know why I stopped. I’m not really scared of flying, though it did give me pause. But I’m still a great flyer. If I go down, it’s been a great run.

Do you own a Labubu?

Which streaming service do you value the most?

☑️ HBO⬜ Apple⬜ Disney⬜ Criterion⬜ Netflix⬜ YouTube

⬜ Timothée Chalamet at the SAG Awards (“I want to be one of the greats”)☑️ Hannah Einbinder at the Emmys (“Go Birds, fuck ICE, free Palestine”)⬜ Kieran Culkin at the Oscars (“I will give you four when you win an Oscar”)⬜ Chappell Roan at the Grammys (labels should “offer a livable wage and health care”)⬜ Demi Moore at the Golden Globes (“I do belong”)

What was the cultural moment that fascinated you the most this year?

⬜ Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl⬜ SNL50⬜ Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement☑️ The Coldplay kiss-cam

The social-media app you used most frequently?

⬜ X⬜ Bluesky⬜ Facebook☑️ Instagram⬜ TikTok⬜ None, I quit social media

If you quit any apps this year, what were they?

I’ve sort of done it all, social-media-wise. I had two years completely off it. I had a break last year. I am currently in a phase of just totally power washing all of the corners of my brain with unadulterated crap. It’s time to set a boundary. I’ve pushed it about as far as I can push. I’m ready to see what else is out there. But this is the difficult thing: I want to participate! I don’t think refusal is the option or the right approach. I think if we want something to be better, we’ve gotta participate. But I don’t yet know how to participate without getting up to my neck in it.

Read All the Culturati 50 Questionnaires

Source: https://www.vulture.com/article/culturati-50-2025-lorde-interview-questionnaire.html