By KRISTEN LAIOSA
On Oct. 10, I attended Lorde’s tour, Ultrasound, heralding her latest release, “Virgin.” In true Lorde fashion, I was originally planning on fuelling my body with illicit, mind-opening substances. These plans fell through of course, as I was going by myself and driving. Still, even without a garden of psychedelia adorning my crown, the night was a radiant connection of souls.
Lorde opened with “Hammer,” the first track on “Virgin,” followed by “Buzzcut Season,” a song from her first album, “Pure Heroine.” “Virgin” is an album about growth, stripping down to your most raw, most vulnerable, most pure and magical self. The conversations between her new material and the old played into this — an older self looking back with tender love at who she used to be, despite continuous metamorphosis.
On stage, a camera projected Lorde’s face — stripped bare without any make up — onto a big screen. Her skin was imperfect and her smile was pure as she performed. She danced in bare feet and boxer shorts, duck tape binding her chest. She draped herself over her instrumentalists, her dancers poured water over her from her infamous water bottle. I danced with beautiful strangers, who, for those two hours, felt like family. Lorde told us we were a network of bodies. “Can you feel it?” she asked. We cheered. We jumped. We danced. We cried. She cried with us.
For me, the most memorable songs of the night were “Clearblue,” an acapella number about grappling with an accidental pregnancy after unprotected sex, and “Man of the Year,” a triumphant ballad exploring gender identity and breaking oneself open to find who you truly are. With my hand over my beating heart, I sang along, lines like “How I hope that I’m remembered / My gold chain, my shoulders, my face in the light / I didn’t think he’d appear and I rode you ‘til I cried / How’s it feel? / Being this alive” reverberating through my bones. Lorde isn’t an artist notable for her vocal performances, but that night her voice soared with equal parts ease, power, and earnestness.
You will hear many of Lorde’s fans describe her music like pages ripped from their very own diary. How so many people, all across the world, can resonate so deeply with one woman’s music is magic. All night, Lorde looked out at the amniotic mass of bodies in awe. I looked back at her. She and I shared the same mischievous sparkle in our eyes. We all did.
Before performing “Liability,” a well-known tearjerker from her renowned album “Melodrama,” Lorde monologued on how special the energy in the room was. If you’ve never heard Lorde speak, or never read something she’s written, it’s a little difficult to summarize how she thinks and portrays her thoughts. She makes these observations about small things, and she makes these small things mean the world. While she is, fundamentally, a famous pop star, she is at heart a poet.
“A lot of us are introverts, aren’t we?” I whooped. Lorde knows me better than anyone, despite having never met me. “We’re quiet, but we have power. We have some animal in us.” At that, the crowd roared. Lorde gave a cheeky smile, her fangs glittering under stellar lights.
While the performance itself was magnifying, the special effects brought the show to a plane of existence beyond reality. The lighting design was unbelievable, almost impossible. Blue lasers cut through Lorde’s midsection, spotlights bathed her in blue. Everything was three dimensional. The camera work was trippy; it did not just show Lorde on stage singing, but was edited in real time to reflect the emotions and themes of the show. There were artful, raw closeups of her face, her belly, her eyes, her lips, her bare feet which moved like fire across the stage. Even the confetti wasn’t merely confetti — each tiny strip of paper contained a handwritten message or motif from Lorde herself.
The show ended with her song “Ribs,” a Lorde classic from “Pure Heroine.” If for some reason you haven’t heard this song, stop what you’re doing and listen to it right now. This song changed my life. And seeing it live was transcendent. We all moved as one, Lorde, the beautiful strangers, and me. My ribs were tough from dancing, my body drenched in sweat, my feet aching, and I wanted the moment to last forever. We all roared along to the song, every single person in that room holding different memories, different life experiences, different associations to that piece of art, but every person in that room feeling the same thing, all emotions releasing in that room and gathering in the atmosphere above. It was unbelievable.
We were not a hive mind, but we were connected as one entity, one voice, one being. The world is scary, and quite frankly, life sucks. But for those two hours, we were free. Our most animal selves were out, glimmering underneath the stage lights, transcending to a higher plane that only those willing to let go of everything know about. Usually, when I go to a concert alone, I feel some level of anxiety. (Even with friends, I tend to get anxious!) But in that room, sober as could be, I only felt free and cared for. “Ultrasound,” ultimately, was a reminder of how much life is worth living, if only for those small moments of togetherness. So go forth, dear reader, and go find your own “Ultrasound.” Go find something earnest, and true, and free.
Featured Image: Sam Penn from BILLBOARD
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