By Maddy Posner \/\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seven years after first playing at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia for her Melodrama<\/em> tour, Lorde returned two albums later to perform her newest album, Virgin<\/em>, to a crowd of over twenty thousand. From her theatrical sequence of dressing and undressing to the specificity of the dancers\u2019 motions to the custom confetti \u2013 printed with the words in the blue light at ULTRASOUND<\/em> \u2013 the performance skipped from flashy to entertaining to resoundingly intimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About an hour into the concert, as the opening to \u201cLiability\u201d slowly began and looped over itself, Lorde sat on her knees in the center of the stage, body awash in a blue glow. \u201cWill you let me see their faces,\u201d she asked someone behind the scenes, and the lights subsequently dimmed and faded. \u201cYou all look astonishingly beautiful. This is very unusual for me, playing in rooms this big. It\u2019s not something I\u2019ve done for [much] of my career. But I absolutely love it, and I feel incredibly lucky to be here.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[It\u2019s] bizarre, my first album Pure Heroine <\/em>came out twelve years ago. I really feel the passing of time. I\u2019m 28 now, I was 16 when I met you. And we\u2019ve really grown up together,\u201d Lorde said, holding the mic up to her mouth as she spoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This idea of getting older was a central focus in the Philadelphia Inquirer\u2019s<\/em><\/a> review of the concert. Though Lorde has always been a representative of the pains of growing up and coming-of-age, with popular songs like \u201cRibs\u201d giving voice to pangs of suburban ennui, the review touched on the ways in which \u201cLorde\u2019s fan base has officially entered adulthood.\u201d Though her music previously centered on \u201cunderage drinking and yearning to escape suburbia,\u201d these songs \u201chave been supplanted by ones of bodily autonomy, self-examination, and alienation from one\u2019s youth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lorde signaled both directly and indirectly that she has entered a new era; the concert itself embodied a fusion of current and past selves. The setlist included many old songs as well as new ones, and though the mood may have grown more mellow with tracks off of Solar Power<\/em> like \u201cOceanic Feeling\u201d and \u201cBig Star,\u201d there was a completeness in Lorde expressing each version of her past self on the big stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fans enjoyed callbacks to Melodrama<\/em> and Pure Heroine<\/em> near the end of the concert. After descending the stage for \u201cDavid,\u201d Lorde cut through the center of the stage audience to perform \u201cA World Alone.\u201d As the crowd surged towards her makeshift podium, more space opened on the floor, allowing for isolated dancing while confetti rained down. \u201cRibs\u201d was another celebrative act of nostalgia, prompting the entire audience to jump and scream along with the words. \u201cI feel like the crowd was very engaged and it was just so much fun,\u201d said Paola Almeda \u201829, who came to the show with a friend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of Lorde\u2019s old lyrics seem to resonate \u2013 if imperfectly so \u2013 with her grown self. When hearing the line \u201cwe\u2019re dancing in this world alone,\u201d one considers how Lorde has described her loneliness, contrasting against her descriptions of deep friendship or love, and emerging anew in her redefining of her aloneness over time. Before starting \u201cLiability,\u201d she said, \u201cThis is a song about when I felt my loneliest in the world and I would love your help singing.\u201d The song may be about loneliness, but it\u2019s also about coming back to oneself, and Lorde seems to have met herself with a kind of peace, at least in this moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another old favorite, \u201cSupercut,\u201d from Melodrama<\/em>, featured a treadmill, used by both the background dancers and Lorde herself. The song is, as the Inquirer<\/em> relates, about \u201creliving memories from an old relationship.\u201d There was a kind of performance to it, with one dancer running on the treadmill while another sprinted towards and away from the same treadmill, clutching her head as she paused before turning around again. This was the same dancer who poured water directly into Lorde\u2019s mouth at another point in the concert. Lorde herself ascended the treadmill in the last moments of the song. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The same element of performance characterized much of the concert. Much of it connects back to Lorde\u2019s grappling with gender expression, an experience she says relates to stopping birth control<\/a> in 2023. Throughout the concert, her look shifted; she started in jeans and a blue shirt stuck together with silver duct tape. She lost the jeans early, though she later pulled the jeans back on and lost the shirt, revealing a black strip of duct tape wrapped around her chest. The two dancers \u2013 one male, and one female \u2013 may act as another twofold representation of her gender identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n