Today, I’ll go to Canal Street, they’ll piss in my ears
Oh, wow, OK, to have such an honest admission on your album’s opening track is quite a statement! It sounds wrong to call ‘Virgin’ sex positive, per se, but it’s definitely Lorde’s most ‘sex aware’ record (counter to its title, I guess), and to ensure that it opens like this definitely warns listeners to leave their kink shaming at the door.
I fear that some of my oversees readers might not get the reference here, so think of this post as a bitesize educational supplement as well as the usual incisive musical journalism. Canal Street is about a kilometre walk away from my house, so I feel a degree of closeness to it to the extent that explaining the history and significance of the reference would actually be something of a pleasure.
If I’d had virginity I would have given that too
Necessary Evil 