Photos by Kiara Mack
It was just days after my fifteenth birthday when Lorde released “Secrets from a Girl (Who’s Seen it All),” a sentimental song reminiscing on when she “couldn’t wait to turn fifteen.” I blinked, it’s been five years, and it feels like my entire adolescence has led up to my 19-year-old self singing, “I’m 19 and I’m on fire!” at the Ultrasound Tour. As a self-proclaimed “prettier Jesus,” Lorde has a curious tendency to return right when you need her most.
Lorde’s two shows in Los Angeles last week marked the last time she will perform this particular version of the show for her 2025 album, Virgin, before introducing a reimagined set for the rest of the year. Having already attended the tour’s first LA stop last October, I was initially disappointed that LA would miss out on experiencing the next phase of the Virgin era. In retrospect, I don’t think I realized how much reliving that magical night would mean to me. I would not have wanted Ultrasound LA to play out any other way because the three nights during which this show has graced the Forum have been as close to perfect places as I may ever get.
On Thursday night, the pit emanated pure euphoria like nothing I had ever felt before and maybe will never feel again. The hours that all of us dedicated fans spent together leading up to Lorde taking the stage meant that we were already comfortable being our most authentic selves around one another when the time came to sing and cry our hearts out. Openers Sophia Stel and Smerz turned the massive venue into a house party and jazz bar respectively, and their uniquely strange auras made them fitting choices to open for one of the most famously unconventional pop stars of the 21st century.
Drenched in blue light, wearing just a t-shirt and jeans, Lorde rose from the stage to the hypnotizing sound of “Hammer” and spent the next two hours playing every track off Virgin along with thirteen other songs from across her career sprinkled throughout. With each non-Virgin track sonically reworked to suit Lorde’s avowed reborn self and most current artistic identity, the concert was a raw extension of her mind, body, and vision. Because the show was the embodiment of Lorde’s truest self, broken open with silver glitter dripping from her body and her most intimate thoughts spilling from her mouth, it felt like home.
The Pure Heroine hits provided a healthy dose of nostalgia, the pop bangers from Melodrama lit up the room like no other — further cementing that album as her magnum opus so far — and “Oceanic Feeling” and “Big Star” from Solar Power served as a reminder for both Lorde and the audience to slow down, take in the moment, and just breathe. Even with a packed setlist emphasizing how impressive and expansive a career Lorde has had at just twenty-nine, it was Virgin that benefited most from the live setting and served as proof that she’s only getting started. A danceable but deeply vulnerable album, Virgin turned the arena into the coolest therapy session ever. Lorde leaves no holds barred when disclosing all the feelings and fluids she associates with the sometimes freeing, sometimes destructive ways she has been pushing her body to the edge in recent years. As Lorde poetically recounted the transformative journey she has been on to get closer to her body, the honesty in her voice and movement made it easy to let loose in our own.
During Lorde’s nightly, off the cuff speech before “Liability,” she shared that her October LA stop on the Ultrasound Tour was her favorite show of last year which is why she wanted to come back and close out the tour here. She took this moment to vulnerably reflect on the journey this tour has taken her on: “Like no album, even, this show has changed me. It’s done a lot of things. It’s made me braver, I think. Something about playing in rooms like this, you have to put your shit aside because I see what you bring to these nights we have together. I know what’s at stake for all of us, so it doesn’t matter what’s going on. Some nights I don’t feel like taking my clothes off, baring it all. I know if I do it right here, something cool will happen. You know how to hold it.” By the time she closed out the show with “What Was That,” “Green Light,” “A World Alone,” and “Ribs,” we were a network of bodies, respectfully bumping into each other with each beat drop and exchanging energy each time our shoulders brushed and our hair swayed. It was a sight of pure joy that perfectly epitomized what Lorde concerts are for — dancing in this world alone both with friends you’ve known your whole life and strangers you just met that night.
Lorde walked through the crowd of crying fans during “David” and went on to perform a euphoric encore at a B-stage which allowed her to sing and dance among us. An arena of people sobbing tears of joy and shouting, “You’re the only friend I need” to their favorite artist may seem extremely parasocial in any other context — and it admittedly probably still is — but I knew exactly what they felt when they did that because I felt that way too. For many of us, Lorde’s music not only soundtracked our adolescence but got us through it, and because we got through it, we got to simultaneously mourn, celebrate, and say goodbye to our childhoods right alongside her.
In a few weeks, I’ll be in my twenties, a full-time “grown woman in a baby tee,” but when I think of my teenage self from here on out, I’ll forever picture her in the pit at the Ultrasound Tour – jumping, dancing, and singing her heart out with glitter on her eyelids, arms, and acne and a smile of sheer bliss plastered on her face. If growing up is what allowed the stars to align for those two sacred hours of my life, maybe growing up doesn’t have to feel so scary after all.
Listen to Virgin below!
