Lorde Livestreams Virgin At Brooklyn Midnight Pop-Up, Endorses Zohran Mamdani For NYC Mayor

Lorde's new album Virgin is out this Friday. She's been rolling out a few tracks from it already, including “Man Of The Year,” last week's "Hammer," and the lead single “What Was That,” which she debuted at an impromptu listening party in New York's Washington Square Park that got delayed a few hours because the cops shut it down at first. In "What Was That," Lorde sings about going to Baby's All Right, the small and beloved Williamsburg, Brooklyn venue (whose equally-beloved founder Billy Jones sadly died of brain cancer earlier this month). And so with just a few days to go before Virgin is out, Lorde hosted a listening party at Baby's on Sunday night where she played the album in full.

As she did with that Washington Square Park ordeal, Lorde teased the event by sending out a marketing text to fans reading "NY.........Message if you're around late tn." She started the party around midnight, and apparently they were giving out promotional lighters. (Did anyone happen to grab an extra one they can give me, by the way?) Lorde also streamed it on her TikTok for the folks who couldn't make it out to Baby's, where apparently people were sending her digital cowboy hats and mustaches to wear? "Some days I'm a man," indeed. She also announced a "Full Transparency" clear LP variant of Virgin.

New York seems to be a recurring setting of Virgin -- Lorde mentions getting piercings on Canal Street in "Hammer" -- and right now, the city is experiencing what's probably one of the most exciting mayoral elections in recent history. A lot of that is thanks to the very popular democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who could very well beat disgraced ex-governor Andrew Cuomo in the primary election. It's not every mayoral race you get a candidate so awesome that people who don't even live in their city are endorsing them. But Lorde, who's from New Zealand, shared her endorsement of Mamdani on Instagram Sunday: "I can't vote but if I could I'd rank the one candidate with a clear vision of the city we want to live in -- one that looks beyond the wealthiest New Yorkers to offer sensible and caring paths forward." To paraphrase "What Was That" again: Well, I want him to be mayor just like that. Election day is tomorrow, June 24.

See clips from Lorde's listening party at Baby's and her Mamdani endorsement below.

@lorde pic.twitter.com/ov2Wy3Wvpr

— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) June 22, 2025