“It's amazing that I’m here playing a sold-out show at Ally Pally,” Lorde told her audience. “If you took a train, I appreciate it. If you live down the road and walked, I appreciate it.”
With humility and talent in abundance, the New Zealander delivered a stunning theatrical three-act set as she explored her journey from unknown schoolgirl to global superstar — and all the melodrama that comes with doing it in just four years.
We were treated to a Tate Modern opening of sorts, with reels of artistic video clips, poetic musings and minimalist neon light installations gracing the stage. Their point wasn’t immediately clear, but it didn’t matter: well into dynamic opener Magnets — a song Lorde guests on for Disclosure — the audience had forgotten as they followed her every move.
Bouncing on stage with boundless energy, she followed it up with Tennis Court and Hard Feelings, all accompanied by a dance troupe. “All of us in this room: it’s alchemy,” she said, before dropping to her knees on a blackened stage and playing the opening bars to Buzzcut Season on xylophone. An awed silence descended.
After Sober, the next “intermission” of clips and poetry helped to punctuate a quick costume change as art and music merged into a cohesive exploration of love, loss and loneliness — the themes of her acclaimed sophomore album, Melodrama.
“It’s a record about a wide-open heart, and I know you know what that’s like because you’re here in this room with me,” she shouted. “It will only work if you can give me everything you f***ing can,” she pleaded later, before delivering an audacious version of Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight. It shouldn’t have worked but did — mostly because she delivered every line with sincerity and conviction. The loudest cheers, unsurprisingly, went to favourites Royals and Green Light.
It all made for a triumphant opening to the Melodrama tour. The frequent comparisons to David Bowie and Kate Bush are deserved — few of Lorde’s peers can command an audience so convincingly.
