Lorde Fully Foreshadowed the “Man of the Year” Cover Art at the Met Gala

Lorde Summer is officially underway thanks to “What Was That,” and another track is already coming soon. She announced that her second single, “Man of the Year,” is set to drop next week, writing, “An offering from really deep inside me. The song I’m proudest of on Virgin.”

The cover art is a tight shot of the Grammy winner’s torso with duct tape covering her chest, and fans picked up that it looked almost identical to the look she wore to this year’s Met Gala.

Lorde subtly teased her next release when she wore a custom gunmetal Thom Browne set with a backless top. Now that we see these looks side-by-side, it makes total sense that she dropped this major Virgin Easter egg.

During her cover interview with Rolling Stone, Lorde explained the lore behind the song and how it relates to her gender identity. She made a make-shift binder with duct tape because “that was fully representative of how [her] gender felt in that moment.”

“I went to the cupboard, and I got the tape out, and I did it to myself,” she said. “I have this picture staring at myself. I was blonde. It scared me what I saw. I didn’t understand it. But I felt something bursting out of me. It was crazy. It was something jagged. There was this violence to it.”

The “Royals” hitmaker also shared a conversation she had with Chappell Roan about her gender identity journey.

“She was like, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’ And I was like, ‘I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man,’” Lorde explained. “I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but there’s a part of me that is really resistant to boxing it up.”