It is a challenge to think of any living artists who have been able to render the consciousness of a generation as intensely and boisterously as Lorde has over the past decade. Her fourth studio album, Virgin, continued a streak of sparkling cultural snapshots that have grown up with yesterday's youth, informing and reflecting the zeitgeist through unguarded lyrics and rousing pop tunes. The ULTRASOUND tour brings this to the UK, and its welcome party in Manchester was not one to miss.
Clusters of teenagers and twenty-somethings swarm into the arena through Victoria Station, evolved reincarnations of the infamous Tumblr quintet. Fans have blue skeletons drawn onto their t-shirts, a gesture to both the 2013 hit 'Ribs' and the X-ray album artwork for Lorde’s newest record. A grizzly-haired dad sat a couple of rows behind has duct tape strapped across the chest of his t-shirt, referencing the iconography of the 'Man of the Year' music video in which the singer binds her chest and performs a lament to androgyny.
Credit: Heji Shin / Lorde @ Republic Records
Virgin producer Jim-E Stack opens up the night behind the decks, playing a collection of songs that he has worked on, ranging from Caroline Polachek’s 'Welcome to my Island' to 'Silver Moon', an unreleased Lorde song first played live on her Solar Power tour. His set is superseded by Dev Hynes of Blood Orange, who delivers a headline-worthy performance to close off the UK leg of his shimmering 2025 tour. A standing ovation and an arena of screams greet the groovy intro to his 2011 hit 'Champagne Coast', which has received a new wave of attention recently after being a certified song of the summer last year.
Blue lights radiate and settle over the crowd in the interlude between the support and main acts, and when Lorde finally takes to the stage, the humming pulses of Virgin’s opening track 'Hammer' begin to bounce off the walls and fill the air of the place. The first handful of songs are possibly her most pop-adjacent, opening with 'Royals', 'Broken Glass', and 'Buzzcut Season' before the first act closed with 'Favourite Daughter' and 'Perfect Places'. Razorblades of light shoot into the singer and the two contemporary dancers who join her on stage, often appearing to slice through their moving bodies.
The second act is perhaps the most vulnerable. Lorde strips down to her underwear during 'Current Affairs' and holds a camera up to her midriff as she sings 'GRWM'. '400 Lux' then joins the setlist with blaring alarms as something of a surprise song, and is met with some of the loudest screams of the night.
Seats are taken for the first time in Lorde’s set as a couple of Solar Power songs are played, and the mood mellows. The band are laid on the floor during 'Big Star', a tender elegy of a song that, like many tracks from her third album, seemed to sail under the radar upon its release.
Then comes the 'Liability' monologue, a moment in each concert that Lorde takes to speak directly to the crowd over a sombre piano melody that precedes one of her most melancholy ballads. “I do not take this for granted”, she assures the crowd, who are grinning silently back at her underneath the house lights. She talks about stripping away all the layers of herself until she reached the core, and how the version of herself she is trying to be right now is what she found, “wearing the same clothes that I was wearing as a kid, getting stoned in my hometown.”
'Man of the Year' echoes around the arena and around twenty thousand skulls, marking the end of the quieter section of the setlist. The shrill guitars pierce into 'If She Could See Me Now' — the grungy track that follows. After a climactic run of some of her most famous songs, Lorde strides through the crowd, parting a sea of star-struck faces as she makes her way to the B-stage. There, she performs 'Ribs' as stretched hands lap against the barrier at her feet and the crowd bubbles up and down, relaying back to her, “you’re the only friend I need”.
Many commentators of the past have emphasised how significantly Lorde’s music has defined her generation, but it would be impossible to talk about her show without mentioning the blinding presence of community and shared experience that breathed life into it. Her entire life has been in the spotlight, and thus her music will, if it has not already, become a time capsule of the world that we have grown up in.
Only someone as ungovernable, unafraid, and unapologetic as Lorde could fill this role. Her art and her ability to perform are raw to an oftentimes unnerving extent. She channels her entire being into these albums and shows, leaving nothing in the dark, no matter how unusual or awkward or ugly it may be.
https://open.spotify.com/album/28bHj2enHkHVFLwuWmkwlQ?si=OcQPeajhQhiX7vScTdkhEg
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