{"id":185576,"date":"2025-09-27T15:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T15:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/185576\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T15:28:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T15:28:08","slug":"lorde-bares-her-soul-and-skin-at-td-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/185576\/","title":{"rendered":"Lorde bares her soul (and skin) at TD Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clutch those pearls, because I\u2019m about to describe Lorde<\/a> taking her top off at TD Garden Friday night.<\/p>\n

Replace whatever you\u2019re picturing \u2014 some lewd display, striptease or otherwise \u2014 with a matter-of-fact wardrobe change. After reciting the crystalline ballad \u201cClearblue,\u201d the New Zealand singer turned on her heel, peeled off her plain T-shirt, and applied some duct tape to her bare chest with her back turned to the crowd. In the stripped-down getup, she performed \u201cMan Of The Year,\u201d a downtempo embrace of her masculine side from her June record, \u201cVirgin.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a piece of a process Lorde\u2019s previously called \u201cthe ooze\u201d: letting herself unfold and extend any which way, physically or artistically. And she slathered plenty of that newfound freedom over every aspect of Friday night\u2019s stop of her \u201cUltrasound\u201d tour (the \u201cVirgin\u201d tour just doesn\u2019t have the same ring to it). <\/p>\n

Love the expression or loathe it, Lorde\u2019s earned the right to \u201cooze\u201d as she pleases. \u201cVirgin\u201d finds the singer-songwriter recovering from a breakup and an eating disorder, orchestrating her inner renaissance while she\u2019s reeling from the whiplash. It\u2019s not as hooky as her past work<\/a>, but it\u2019s honest to a fault, offering these confessions on a bed of icy synth-pop.<\/p>\n

Not every \u201coozing\u201d moment Friday night was obvious. Some brushes with independence were as simple as flailing around to opening song \u201cHammer,\u201d an evolved form of the exorcism-esque mannerisms from her earliest performances. Other times it appeared through exhuming deep cuts like \u201cA World Alone\u201d and \u201cNo Better,\u201d from Lorde\u2019s debut LP, peppering the lesser-known songs from her teenage years into the full-bodied adulthood of \u201cVirgin\u201d \u2014 all 11 tracks of it, approximately half of the setlist. <\/p>\n

Lorde\u2019s never put much stock in frills \u2014 she has a song about that very topic called \u201cRoyals,\u201d perhaps you\u2019re familiar? \u2014 and Friday night\u2019s performance upheld that ethos with production elements that seemed quaint in comparison to her 2010s pop contemporaries. Platforms hoisted her into the air for set peaks like \u201cTeam,\u201d a 6-foot-tall fan tossed her hair to the drama of \u201cBuzzcut Season,\u201d blue lasers cast ribbons across her midsection for \u201cPerfect Places.\u201d <\/p>\n

At one point, she dropped her jeans to reveal black Calvin Klein boxers and stayed in her skivvies for a few songs, including \u201cGRWM\u201d (short for \u201cgrown woman\u201d). As she recited various physical features (\u201cwide hips\/tooth chipped\u201d), one of her dancers held a camera to her midriff to flash close-up images of her body on the Jumbotron. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s \u201cthe ooze\u201d again: a graphic but tasteful shrug in the direction of the skipped meals and covered mirrors she mentions on \u201cVirgin.\u201d Such a nonsexual display \u2014 that is, trading starving for comfortably showing some skin \u2014 felt reminiscent of appreciating nudes in an art museum.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the set, Lorde bounded through \u201cWhat Was That,\u201d the lead single from \u201cVirgin\u201d and her first song to hit No. 1 on U.S. Spotify since \u201cRoyals.\u201d It\u2019s meant to be a difficult glance in a relationship\u2019s rearview, but the song took on a new life towards the set\u2019s finale. <\/p>\n

Duct tape, disrobing, unrefined dance moves \u2014 what was that? Answer: a messy, glorious rebirth, whether you care to understand \u201cthe ooze\u201d or not.<\/p>\n

LORDE<\/p>\n

With Blood Orange and the Japanese House. At TD Garden, Friday <\/p>\n

Victoria Wasylak can be reached at vmwasylak@gmail.com<\/a>. Follow her on Bluesky @VickiWasylak.bsky.social.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the setlist from Friday night, according to setlist.fm<\/a>. Keep checking back as the list continues to update.<\/p>\n

\"Lorde<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clutch those pearls, because I\u2019m about to describe Lorde taking her top off at TD Garden Friday night.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[33178,236,7069,109121,88,32353,109122,109116,109117,308,957,37270,216,28530,25136,688,109119,109118,109115,2761,109120],"class_list":["post-185576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-arts-culture-and-entertainment","tag-celebrities","tag-concert","tag-day-3","tag-entertainment","tag-festival","tag-glastonbury","tag-glastonbury-england","tag-glastonbury-festival","tag-horizontal","tag-human-interest","tag-lorde","tag-music","tag-music-festival","tag-new-zealand","tag-photography","tag-pilton","tag-singer-songwriter","tag-somerset-england","tag-uk","tag-worthy-farm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}