Lorde live in London: leftfield star finally hits arenas
12 years after her breakout with ‘Royals’, Lorde plays her first arena shows in the UK. It was worth the wait for how strongly on her own terms it is
It feels somewhat ridiculous that tonight’s show at The O2 is Lorde’s first headline arena show in London. When the Kiwi singer released her mega-hit ‘Royals’ in 2013, she looked on the path to becoming a megastar. In the decade since though, she has shown herself to crave being more of a Kate Bush than a mainstream game-player, with artistry and storytelling prioritised over quick wins and radio hits. If she was to get to arena status worldwide, it would have to be on her own terms.
To drop ‘Royals’ with little fanfare just two songs into her arena bow in the UK feels pointed – a show of the career she has built away from the song, rather than on the back of it. It’s like she’s proving to the world, as well as herself, that the 20,000 in the room tonight will (and indeed do) go more bananas for at least a dozen other songs more fervently than for her breakout single.
As expected, tonight’s show firmly is on Lorde’s own terms, in all its strange, leftfield, often messy glory. Hinged around new album Virgin, which saw her return to thudding beats after the acoustic left-turn of 2021’s Solar Power, the gig is a whirlwind of props and nods to the gender-questioning themes of the new record, to varying degrees of success.
Non-stop rounds of subtle costume changes – including stripping down to boxer shorts during ‘Current Affairs’ – and a cameo for her “emotional support water bottle” feel a little lost in the cheap seats, but when she stomps on a treadmill, each step in time with the thunderous beat of the divine ‘Supercut’, the room lights up.
There’s also an impressive intimacy retained in such a cavernous arena across the show. The stunning ‘Clearblue’ sees her wig out with a vocoder, while ‘Oceanic Feeling’, a highlight of the underappreciated but resurgent Solar Power, has her kneeling down at a makeshift home recording setup in the centre of the stage.
It only works, though, when paired alongside the transcendent hits you need to headline arenas. ‘Green Light’, with an appearance from Stranger Things star Sadie Sink (who dances to the song when performing John Proctor Is the Villain on Broadway), is a glorious blast of abandon, as is closing track ‘Ribs’, where the carefully curated themes of the show are sidelined to be replaced by sheer pandemonium.
Before ‘Liability’, Lorde tells the crowd how she spent half a year in London to recover from the turbulent period of her life that inspired Virgin. “I found myself, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence that it happened here,” she says. That time in the capital helped her realise that sometimes you have to “let it all hang out” and submit. It makes her patient ascendance to this moment all the more meaningful, and somehow turns her biggest UK gig into her most unburdened too.