“In the blue light, I can make it all right” Lorde belts as hundreds of flashing blue and white lights dance around her. Her dancers dance without any choreography, as they are carrying their own cameras to record Ella for the big screens around the arena. She runs carefree across her stage completely barefoot, in only jeans and only three pieces of duct tape for her top. Thousands of fans jump around in the arena, screaming the lyrics to What Was That? From her new album, Virgin. On September 30th, Lorde brought her Ultrasound Tour to the Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Lorde ,also known by her real name, Ella Yelich-O’Connor, has been relevant since she made her first debut when she was only sixteen. She released her debut album Pure Heroine on September 27, 2013, along with the song that got her to the place she is at today, Royals. Royals, Team, and Ribs skyrocketed on the charts, making her a staple in the music industry. Her music never gets old. She has gone through many albums and hits, such as Melodrama, with the songs Green Light, Liability, and Supercut. Solar power had Solar Power and Oceanic Feeling. Virgin with What Was That? and Man of the Year. Throughout her career, she has become a huge inspiration to many popular artists such as Conan Gray, Olivia Rodrigo, and Billie Eilish. She created a community and built her own career through her unique talent and craft. She is eccentric in her own good way, as she dances on stage barefoot, and uses her anesthesia to guide her in her records and body movements.
On September 30, Lorde brought her tour to the Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia. “It was amazing hearing the songs I love most being played live. The entire atmosphere was so exciting!” says Hailey Bernard (Grade 10). Lorde’s first opener, The Japanese House, was my personal favorite out of the two. Their music style sounded like a female version of the band, the 1975, with their upbeat instrumentals and their unique style of writing. They performed songs such as Sunshine Baby and Boyhood. The second opener ,Blood Orange, was all the rage through the crowd, and definitely was the fan favorite. Many people took their seats for the group, as they played their hit song Champagne Coast. After the openers, all of the lights in the arena turned to a vibrant blue, signifying that Lorde was coming on soon. The lights went out as a flashing beam of light shone onto the stage while the opening of Hammer rang throughout the arena, fans cheering with excitement as the moment happened. A ,from my own perspective, the silhouette of Lorde appeared as she rode a lift onto the stage into the flashing beam of light. “There’s a heat in the pavement, my mercury’s raising” Lorde sang as the stage began to take shape. During the first bridge, her effects started with flashing blue lights everywhere, and with multiple visuals and live videos of her on the large screen. She was wearing a simple t-shirt with jeans and no shoes or socks, which makes her even more of a real and authentic person. She dances with no choreography, and moves her body based on how she feels. After her strong opening, she moved into Royals, which had little effects but still was amazing. After talking to the audience, she began to play one of my favorite songs from Virgin, Broken Glass. Her intense strobe lights, the screen visuals, and the flashing blue lights tied the moment together. The crowd, at this point, was so loud for her.
Buzzcut Season, a song from her first album, rang out through the arena. A large fan was brought onto the stage to create a dramatic effect during the song, as it was fitting. My favorite song from Virgin is Favorite Daughter, so I was ecstatic when she started to play it. Then she rolled into the first Melodrama song of the night, Perfect Places. Green and blue lights flashed everywhere as her dancers followed her with their cameras as they danced around the stage. She went into Shapeshifter and Current Affairs, ending by laying down on the stage. “In my head, I play a supercut of us” She sang out, still laying on the ground. Supercut was the next song on the setlist, which is nearing the number one spot on my list of my favorite Lorde songs of all time. Fans went wild, singing each lyric like their lives depended on it. A treadmill was brought out to the stage for Lorde to run on during the end of the song, encapsulating exactly how listening to the song feels in that moment. She then showed the crowd her iconic ombre water bottle, and she claimed that it “was the real star tonight”. She went into a song she wrote when she was fourteen called No Better, and she asked for the audience’s help singing it because it is such a fast song.
She continued with GRWM and The Louvre, and went into a short two-song set for her album Solar Power, which contained Oceanic Feeling and Big Star. After Big Star, the lights of the arena turned on because she said that she “wanted to see our faces”. She told us that it was twelve years since her first album came out, and about how we have been on her musical journey for twelve years together. She explained details about her life and her career, and about how she is still “scared”, but it’s just human nature and we have created such a tight knit community for her. She proceeded to sing the song she said “she felt the lowest in her life when writing it”. She put her own raw emotion into the performance of Liability. She ended the set with Clearblue.
She left the stage and came back in her iconic duct tape top and sang Man of the Year. She followed it with If She Could See Me Now, which contained the confetti drop. She ,in my opinion, closed with very strong performances of Team and What Was That?, in which she had many flashing lights, colorful lights, and visuals to go along with the songs. Another song that is close to, and may be, my favorite Lorde song of all time was next. She began to sing Green Light, in which she and her dancers ran across and around the stage for a lot of the time while wild green lights filled up the room of the jumping, electric crowd. She went into David, in which she walked through almost the whole pit. David is a song that everyone knew would sound perfect live, and it did. To end, she went to her b stage in a sweatshirt and her jeans (the b stage ended up in my area!) to play her final two songs. She sang A World Alone, which was not on the setlist and is only played at select shows. She closed her whole show with Ribs, which was my favorite performance of the night; it left many people in tears. Ribs is a song about growing up, and how the idea is scary. It discusses themes of her adolescence, in which she wrote the song after a party while her parents were away at only fifteen years old. It discusses friendships, and how you can’t go back to the past regardless of how much you want to. Fans danced around, screamed the lyrics back to her, and jumped with their friends. She added an extra verse after the bridge of the song as well.
Ella is truly an amazing performer and artist; she does it like nobody else does. Her authentic self, her real, humane feelings that she shares with the world through her songs, no one else is like her. Her effects, visuals, and dancing just added an extra layer of love to her show. I truly love her music and her talent and I’ve loved her since I was just four years old, and I will continue to for the rest of my life.