On Friday, Lorde released her new album Virgin and debuted every song live in a surprise Glastonbury set. The new album is great, but it's got some fans pissed off for a reason that has nothing to do with the music. Lorde is selling a number of physical variants of Virgin, including a "bathwater" vinyl edition and a CD that's been printed on clear plastic, to go along with Lorde's ideas about "full transparency." The problem, as Digital Music News points out, is that those clear CDs apparently won't actually play in a lot of CD players.
Across social media, some Lorde fans are complaining that their copies of the Virgin CD won't play in lots of CD players, including cars and Discmans. It's not just that you can't tell whether it's right-side up; some players apparently won't even accept the disc itself. Unfortunately, the clear version is the only CD edition of Virgin right now. This would obviously be a bigger problem if it happened 20 years ago, but some people still want to listen to the physical media that they buy, not just have it as a conversation piece.
She is three days old. Favs???Some L4 facts:— First song started (and second to last finished) was David— Last song started was Clearblue. Last song finished was Broken Glass— Hardest song was FD, to write, to produce, to sing. Kicked my ass— We cut a song last minute… pic.twitter.com/wbxQ4pqXT0
— Lorde (@lorde) June 30, 2025
Virgin is out now on Republic.
