Lorde has given fans a heartbreaking update, but some think it’s a sign to expect a new album from her.
The New Zealand singer, 26, emailed a newsletter to her fans on Wednesday telling them: “I ache all the time.”
Lorde, real name Ella Yelich-O’Connor, revealed she had been living in London but missed her homeland. She seemed to have split from her long-time beau, Justin Warren.
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“I’m living with heartbreak again. It’s different but the same. I ache all the time, I forget why and then remember,” she wrote.
“I’m not trying to hide from the pain, I understand now that pain isn’t something to hide from, that there’s actually great beauty in moving with it. But sometimes I’m sick of being with myself. I eat chocolate to try and manipulate the endorphins, bring back the sweet happiness of Easter morning.
“I sit in the time machine and wait for it to move, but it hasn’t been invented yet.”
She explained that in London “things feel clear,” but she was alone with her thoughts and “starting to miss my friends and family, like a vitamin I’m deficient in”.
Lorde and Warren, 42, a music executive, first met when she was 13 years old and had been together since at least 2016 after attending the New Zealand Music Awards together the previous year.
“My gut isn’t working properly, my skin is worse than ever, I’ve gotten sick half a dozen times. I realised earlier this year that listening to my body is hard for me, it’s something I never really learned how to do,” she explained of navigating the dark time in her life.
The singer also revealed she had taken hallucinogenic mushrooms, which she said helped her understand her body and realize it was “magnificent, and that hating it is as futile as hating a tree.” It also helped her feel “in my bones how destabilising it is to leave home and start a new life the way I did.”
Lorde explained she had canceled a number of scheduled appearances, including Paris Fashion Week, because she didn’t want to fake looking happy.
“At the start of my career I promised myself I’d never be one of the people in the light smiling if it wasn’t real,” she wrote.
The letter wasn’t all darkness, with Lorde speaking highly of her European tour and giving some book recommendations.
She also asked fans to donate to The Kindness Institute—a mental health resource for young Māori people—even though “the cost of living is cooked for Kiwis right now and pop stars asking people to donate sux,” promising she would ask her record company to donate.
Lorde wrapped up the newsletter by promising that although it had a dark undertone she was doing fine.
“Don’t worry about me. I still laugh every day, it’s all moving, even when it goes slow. I’ve accepted the mission — I have a self to recover.”
While she did not confirm if she was working on new music, fans hoped the email was a sign of a new album.
“Empathising with Lorde for sharing her raw emotions, but I am greedy coz I know her new music will slap haha,” wrote one person on X, formerly Twitter.
Another added: “can’t help but be happy when lana, florence, and lorde are sad cause the music is about to be so astronomically good.”
And a third wrote: “Lorde said she living with heartbreak again. I feel for her but that mean melodrama pt 2 is on the way.”