“2009 me’d be so impressed,” Lorde sang in her 2025 track “GRWM,” doused in a shower of white beams.
And at her Sept. 20 sold-out show at Nashville’s The Pinnacle, there’s no question 13-year-old Ella Yelich-O’Connor would be in awe of Lorde’s new chapter: one of rebirth, self-discovery and 100% autonomy.
Hitting the stage in promotion of her June record, “Virgin,” the 28-year-old electro-pop artist bared it all on her first of two Nashville stops as a part of “The Ultrasound World Tour.”
She stripped down in front of the crowd, shedding her clothes and shoes, but also who she used to be.
“I stand before you a woman changed,” Lorde told the crowd.
“As you may have gazed, my vibe is a little different these days. And really my vibe is just that …. there’s no vibe. This is just what I wear, this is what I look like, this is what my hair does, this is who I am.”
Following openers Chanel Beads and The Japanese House, the New Zealand singer delivered a liberated 90-minute set fueled by her breathy, conversational vocals and raw, unpredictable movements.
Here are the top moments from Lorde’s career-spanning show.
Lorde’s Nashville concert basks in rebirth
Lorde walked onto the stage, sauntering down a catwalk as synths pulsed and a white laser beam shined her way.
Sporting a pink T-shirt with a lion printed on it, jeans, sneakers and a head of dark, untamed curls, Lorde launched into “Hammer,” the first track on “Virgin.”
“Some days, I’m a woman, some days, I’m a man,” she sang as the crowd belted along. “I might have been born again / I’m ready to feel like I don’t have thе answers.”
For her second song of the night, Lorde played her 2013 hit “Royals,” flexing her muscles in a golden spotlight.
With glimmering synths, two backup dancers whose movement bordered on performance art, and baths of hazy blue light, Lorde’s show was deeper than just a concert from its beginning notes.
She changed her outfit in front of the audience, slipping off her jeans to reveal Calvin Klein underwear and walking the stage with bare feet.
On song “Man of the Year,” Lorde appeared with silver tape over her chest, singing, “Can’t believe I’ve become someone else / Someone more like myself.”
Lorde even went avant-garde, performing track “Supercut” as she ran on a treadmill.
As she showcased movements that ranged from flowy and lyrical to skipping and writhing, Lorde’s image was projected onto a screen behind the stage, sometimes broadcasted from a handheld camera brandished by one of her backup dancers like a paparazzo.
The concert was unpolished — purposefully so.
“Virgin” marked a transformation in Lorde.
Even those who have not heard the album’s songs would recognize its cover, which has become a pop culture cornerstone. The record’s tile shows an X-ray image of a pelvis with an IUD inside, a zipper and a belt buckle.
But “Virgin” isn’t about sexual purity, Lorde said, but rather a return to self.
It’s an autobiographical album where Lorde recounts navigating difficult relationships, confronting generational trauma, working through an eating disorder, and reclaiming her body as she embraces both masculinity and femininity.
“I felt like stopping taking my birth control, I had cut some sort of cord between myself and this regulated femininity,” Lorde told Rolling Stone in May.
Now, Lorde feels “in the middle gender-wise,” and though she does not identify as non-binary, she has felt her gender expanding.
This tour also follows Lorde’s two years of MDMA and psilocybin therapy, a PTSD treatment, which helped free her from crippling stage fright.
That newfound freedom was laced into the fabrics of Lorde’s Nashville show — every fan could feel it.
Lorde’s ‘Writer in the Dark’ speech: ‘That ragged, wild voice must be protected’
One of the night’s most powerful moments arrived when Lorde addressed the crowd ahead of the tour debut of her 2017 track, “Writer in the Dark.”
“This is my absolute favorite size of show. I can see every face,” Lorde said as she sat on the stage.
She told the crowd that her new “vibe,” which is showing up as her most pure self, is intentional.
“I reflected so much on the relationship that we have, this thing that we have been putting love into for 12, 13 years now, and at some point I was like, ‘I think that anything I could try to cook up is inferior to what I just let come out of me naturally.'”
Part of this came just from growing older, Lorde said, “and realizing that there is just so much beauty in things being exactly the way they’re meant to be.”
Every song she’s ever written has come from impulse, she explained. “And every single time I’ve written a song, this goes until two weeks ago, I feel stupid for making the expression.” But she pushes past that voice.
“I realized recently that it’s not my job to decide what comes out of me. It’s my job to just let it come out of me,” she said. “And if it’s my job, then it’s definitely your job … it’s me up here, but it could be any one of us. You chose me years ago to speak for you.”
Lorde said she believes now, more than ever, that we must trust our impulses.
“That ragged, wild voice that comes out of you in the dark — that is so important and must be protected. ‘Cause s*** is getting weird and I’m getting scared … but they cannot take that impulse that happens in the dark.
“So please for the love of f***ing god, promise me you will make it. And I’ll keep making mine.”
And after the concert’s undeniable standout “Green Light,” Lorde walked through the crowd on her track “David,” and ended the show by performing her hit “Ribs” from a platform in the back of the crowd.
That same beam of light that shone on Lorde at the show’s start returned as she sang her final notes.
She reached up, grabbed the beam, and the lights went dark.
Lorde Nashville Set List
Audrey Gibbs is a music journalist at The Tennessean. You can reach her at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Top moments: Lorde performs first of two nights in Nashville at start of ‘Ultrasound’ tour
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