For perhaps the first time in her career, Lorde feels at home on stage.
It’s a surprising notion for the 28-year-old pop star, who has been open about her debilitating struggle with stage fright since becoming a global phenomenon at 16 with the smash hit “Royals.” But something about the UltraSound tour — which successfully transmits the raw, lay-it-all-bare energy of Lorde’s fourth album “Virgin” even at huge venues like Madison Square Garden and the Kia Forum — is different.
“It’s honestly been a completely transformative experience for me,” Lorde tells Variety over Zoom from L.A., where she’s resting before playing Las Vegas that night. Her signature brunette curls cascade over a cozy gray hoodie as morning light peeks through the window. “A lot feels full-circle from my career starting 12 years ago.”
Maybe that’s because it’s on her own terms. With the UltraSound tour — which wraps its sold-out U.S. leg on Wednesday night in Seattle before heading to Europe in November — Lorde sought to subvert every trope of what an arena show should be. She does outfit changes on stage (though her look is simple to begin with — just a T-shirt and jeans). She freely walks through the crowd, rubbing shoulders with her fans who in turn respect her personal space. Production gimmicks and visuals are kept to a minimum, with an on-the-ground camera crew capturing angles most pop stars wouldn’t dare show. Fans and critics alike seem to agree that the result is jarringly intimate and extremely affecting.
“It makes me feel incredibly proud to be in something so plain where just enough happens, and then the missing piece is the audience, and they kill it every night. And I’m in my fucking T-shirt and jeans!” Lorde continues. “There’s something very incredible about stripping it back to that degree.”
Below, Lorde takes Variety through her vision for the UltraSound tour, taping her chest on stage for “Man of the Year,” balancing nostalgia with newness in the setlist and more.
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When you set out to craft the tour, what was your original vision and how did it take shape?
“Virgin” is very raw and unadorned — I really tried not to dramatize or dress anything up — so I knew that approach had to continue over to the tour. It just sort of revealed itself along the way: I would try to impose something on it and it would reject it, you know? Even things like, What if I wear this? Anything that felt decadent or overly adorned seemed too rich in the show. I talked so much at the beginning of making this about wanting to see the [underlying] wires because that’s a lot of the vibe of “Virgin.” Like, OK, you have this young woman and then here’s all the guts underneath.
With an arena show there’s this shininess — it’s pretty sealed, you sort of don’t know how the magic is happening. And I thought there was something really cool about actually harnessing all the guts and wires — which, to me, is such a beautiful part of music-making — and celebrating all of that.
And you have a camera crew following you throughout the show, literally showing all the wires.
It was quite funny getting the camera crew on board with, “OK, film this crazy patch of wires on the back of the stage.” They’re like, “Are you sure?” But yeah, it’s very physical and visceral. It has the same feeling as seeing my acne, to me. Like, when you’re seeing this maybe slightly more unflattering angle or the angle that you don’t normally see, it all added up to be very intimate in the way that I want to be right now — this quite raw, intense intimacy.
This is the other thing: I’ve always had such bad skin on tour. I’ve always really struggled with my acne, and touring had become this… I’d add more makeup and it would get worse and I’d add more makeup. This year I was like, they can see exactly as you are, you might as well just lay it all bare and trust that you’re beautiful. And seeing this sort of beautiful constellation on my face, it’s totally part of the show and it has a good feeling.
It must be empowering to stand up there and just be you.
It is. It’s incredible. I’ve just come to realize that, as an artist, you might as well decide that everything about you is a strength and something to be highlighted rather than saying, “These are the things that are wrong about me, and until they’re right there will be something not right about my art.” Bringing in all these things that I tried to push away has really made everything a lot cooler.
I saw your surprise set at Glastonbury back in June, when you played “Virgin” live for the first time. How did that performance inform the tour?
My big takeaway from that was like, “You need to go and do some dance.” Because I felt not very in my body and I knew that it needed to be this freer, rawer movement. Walking offstage I was like, “You’re going to choreo, bitch.” And then it ended up being rawer than that, but I did spend a lot of time just trying to like get into these songs on a physical level. Glasto was so cool and really felt like a little test-kitchen presentation. I liked that it sort of lifted the top in quite a mysterious [way]… like people didn’t know what they were going to get.
What was it like working out how dance plays a role in the show? You have a couple of dancers, too.
I worked with this awesome choreographer, Kianí Del Valle, and we gave [the dancers] a lot of very pedestrian movement. Sitting somewhere, putting on shoes, eating an apple, listening in headphones that sort of progresses into something a bit wilder. I was just trying to build it in a way that would work on me. I think I’ll respond to dance if it’s on one of two levels: really pedestrian or really animal and kind of untamed. And rather than anything that felt too much like choreo, that was the tone I wanted to take it to. And it does feel very Lorde [laughs]. It’s funny how that works.
Your outfit changes are also very minimal, and you do them on stage. What’s the significance of that?
I liked the idea of the audience getting to see that change, because it’s a very simple change. You know, a belt comes off, jeans come off, a T-shirt comes off. And it becomes this different thing. It just fit with the rawness and the intimacy to do it in front of people. I tried to hold up all these tropes of an arena show and be like, why is it like that? How can we keep the tension?
I didn’t think about this at the time, but I do think there is something cool about me not leaving the stage. Because definitely as an audience member, I can switch off a bit when the artist goes and gets changed. I know what they’re doing and I’m excited for them to come back, but it snips a thread, you know? Being on the whole time, there’s this sort of intensity that grows. I can’t touch up, I can barely get a drink of water. Sometimes I’m like, “Oof, that would be nice actually, to go back and look cute for a second.” But no, it’s just how it’s meant to be.
Speaking of water, your water bottle — which has become a bit of an icon itself — makes an appearance on stage with you and is currently your Instagram profile picture. Why?
Here’s the thing, it’s really just a water bottle. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s a beautiful object and sort of became this personal talisman to me. I love the idea of finding magic in our everyday lives, and I have what I call “sticker brain” — the sort of shimmery, sparkly stickers that I would use as a child, that all still activates me. So I saw this bottle and was like, “Mm, fabulous.”
All the things that we use for production moments are very simple. There’s a treadmill, there’s a big-ass fan, but there’s poetry there and there’s magic. But yeah, the water bottle is funny, I know. It’s also like, the cap doesn’t work great. She’s not perfect. And she was very expensive, but I’ve had her for three years now. I’m like, some of you have definitely bought a new Stanley Cup in that time.
You also tape your chest on stage during “Man of the Year,” like in the song’s music video. Why was it important to bring that moment on tour?
From before there was even an album, I knew that would be a really important thing to see live. It just felt like an image I had never seen, and it felt incredibly vulnerable and powerful to me. I feel kind of like a rockstar, like, wow, there’s something really special about this.
When we started doing it on the tour I realized, whoa, this is actually incredibly vulnerable. And through the course of the song, I become powerful. It empowers me. But it’s quite amazing how it works on me as a device. I feel so bare in front of these people, and there is this sort of intake of breath in the room because it is just such a raw image. And that feels like exactly the work that I need to be doing. That’s why I’m playing an arena, is to give you this image.
And some fans have started taping their chests at your shows as well.
Oh my God, fabulous. When I look out and I see these people, it’s the sickest thing I’ve ever seen.
Your setlist is a healthy balance of nostalgia with the new — how did you go about forming it?
Wow, thank you, because I was kind of terrified about making the setlist. The challenge of being an artist in your eighth or 10th or 12th year is, how do I make sure that I’m not leaving any of these old pieces behind? Because they still mean something to people and they’re a part of me, and so it’s gotta come forward, but sometimes it’s hard. I was 14 or 15 when I wrote a couple of those songs, and we all know it can be hard to find something to identify with in those parts of you.
I chose things that had the UltraSound qualities. There’s definitely a strong rhythmic foundation under the whole show. I wanted it to move and really be physical. I also thought about the shared singing [with the crowd] factor, which is such a part of my shows. I’ve gotta live in it every night and so it’s gotta be something that is like magic to me. And the setlists keep changing, but the big challenge for me was the “Solar Power” of it all. I had to find a way to do that and we’re still working out different things — I have all these different ideas for that. But I really like where we landed, not going the just-the-singles type route has made it feel like a part of it. But I miss some of those songs and I want to play them.
You also play “Royals” second instead of during the encore, which may not be what people expect.
I really tried to build the show for the obsessive, you know? For the super fan. I don’t really have many casual fans — you’re sort of all in or you don’t care, which I really love. So putting “Royals” so soon, I thought about it like a film — how there will be a really exciting opening scene and then they’re like, “OK, hang on. I should probably explain. Let’s go back a bit.” Starting with “Royals” after this really exciting opening scene of “Hammer,” it helps you go on the journey to be like, “This is the first thing people heard.” It’s so cool, I still love playing that song so much. Same with “Ribs” [during the encore]. It’s so precious to them and I wanted them to just like totally fall apart at the end, and they do.
You walk through the crowd during “David,” which has become an incredibly intimate moment at your shows.
It’s the absolute highlight of my career, to be honest — it feels like some stuff has gone right for this moment to be able to happen. Because there is an insane amount of trust that these kids have in me to keep them safe, and that I have in them. And they are so just incredible and respectful and I have never felt unsafe in any way. It’s so beautiful.
I leave out the front door, you know, and I’m in an Arc’teryx jacket, very basic. I look like a commuter. And I always thought about it like, I don’t know if you’ve seen [the film] “Drive,” but there’s this opening scene where Ryan Gosling has this crazy car chase and then he just puts on his baseball hat and sort of disappears into the crowd. That was kind of the inspiration, like, it’s not about me. I’m not trying to have you think that I’m some God. I just have to embody all this stuff and then sort of dissolve. So going into the crowd and being in this very plain outfit — literally a shell — like I’m ready for the commute and dissolving into them, and then they become the production. It’s very astonishing. This moment where I’m in the crowd and they’re all fucking going for it is the most beautiful moment of the show.
How does it feel to be up close and personal with your fans for this song? Everyone is singing and some of them get quite emotional.
It’s so special. Something about breaking the boundary of I’m up here and you’re there, it really reminds me what it is that’s happening. It’s so different. With “David,” that was a song that we loved — it’s the cool, weird closer of the album — but we never thought that it would become this. It really has meaning to people and they’re out there singing it with their full throat, you know, it’s so sick to me. And this is the cool thing about TikTok to me is like, they chose the sickest song [to blow up on the platform]. I wouldn’t have chosen that to be any kind of like focus, but the fact that they chose it, there’s something very pure about it.
You’ve been open about your previous struggles with stage fright, but you seem very comfortable up there now. What are your daily rituals and tour must-haves that help you stay grounded?
I’m pretty lucky that my stage fright is at bay now, because that was really a big part of my life. What do I do? I don’t know, I’m a bit of a witch. I’m always burning something, I’m always writing something down before the show. Nothing too crazy — I do a bunch of push-ups and planks and shit.
I also wanted to ask you about adding your name to the No Music for Genocide boycott and geo-blocking your music in Israel. What was behind that decision?
I think that as artists, how we speak is with our symbolic action, you know? And we wield this power in the form of our compositions. It’s just one of those moments where to not act in line with my values would feel really wrong.
And obviously you’re still touring “Virgin,” but have you had any inklings about how your sound may evolve next or when fans can expect new music?
I mean, I’m excited to find out. I’m definitely feeling very active and not needing a break from being creative. I’m feeling kind of insatiable, to be honest. So I don’t know, but I’ve thrown the gauntlet down that it’s not going to be four years [again], so I’ve gotta keep to that.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
From Variety US