A Night with Lorde: the Solar Power Tour
Poster for the Lorde Solar Power Tour stop at The Met Philadelphia. Image sourced from https://themetphilly.com/event/lorde-solar-power-tour/
When Lorde graced The Met Philadelphia on April 20, 2022, for the sold-out stop on her Solar Power Tour, I had the privilege of witnessing it all. According to my Live Nation confirmation email, I bought my tickets nearly a year ago in June 2021, meaning it’s been quite the experience of basically forgetting about the concert, remembering whenever I received one of Lorde’s wholesome email newsletters, and then dutifully streaming Solar Power.
But Lorde’s mid-concert acknowledgment that I (along with all the other fans crammed into The Met) did, indeed, buy my tickets within two and a half minutes, made any twists and turns in the journey more than worth it. According to Lorde herself, I am “a real one.” An affirmation of both my ticket-purchasing skills and long-time love for Lorde was rather heartwarming, which might be the best word to describe the entire night. Her moments of audience engagement between songs plus the heavenly experience of a venue collectively singing to hits like “Green Light” made for a concert that was memorable, moving, and wholly awesome.
Lorde shared at one point that she intentionally chose The Met for its intimacy. Having stomped up multiple flights of stairs to get to my seat and having genuinely feared falling to my death whenever I stumbled forward, I didn’t fully understand what she meant. But thinking back on it, Lorde is not only someone who has performed at huge arenas like the Wells Fargo Center (which is where she sang in 2018 for her previous tour’s stop in Philadelphia), but she’s an artist who was so young when she first catapulted to fame. I guess The Met maybe was kind of intimate. Even all the way up in the Mezzanine section, I know I felt the exhilarating sensation of connection.
I remember when Lorde prompted the audience: “Think about how you were when you first met me.”
“Royals” was the start of it all for her. After her debut single dominated the charts in New Zealand, the rest of the world soon caught on. In August 2013, Lorde became the first female solo artist in 17 years to top the U.S. Billboard alternative chart. She was only 16 then. “Royals” would soon go on to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would also lead to her winning Best Pop Solo Performance and Song of the Year at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.
Lorde debuted Pure Heroine, her first full-length album, in September 2013. Needless to say, it was met with serious success and acclaim, and to make a long story short, similar things can be said regarding her sophomore record. Released in June 2017, Melodrama (a beloved no-skip album, in my personal opinion) received an overwhelmingly positive reception, despite lesser commercial success.
Then, in August 2021—Lorde appears to have a pattern of dropping an album every four years—she returned with Solar Power, paving the way for the Solar Power Tour.
Lorde is only 25 years old, but it feels like she’s been on a long journey since her start. It feels like we have as well.
“You were a different person, right?”
Her voice was clear, far-reaching, a little dreamy, and very distinctly Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor.
“You were a little more raw, a little looser, maybe. Maybe your skin was bad and now it’s good.”
I have an oddly clear memory of someone in the audience yelling “Accutane,” perhaps because it was strangely fitting for the concert environment.
“Mine is still bad,” Lorde admitted and laughed. “But together, we have grown so much,” she declared, inspiring cheers across The Met.
“I had my heart broken and I brought it to you like, ‘Do you understand how I feel?’ ‘Can you comfort me?’ And you did.” She paused for a moment, “I go away. I figure shit out. You know, I start spending a lot of time at the beach. And I bring you what I found and you’re always so, so generous and so kind with how you take it and make it your own, and I'm so grateful for that, Philly.”
If I remember correctly, the response, “We love you!” came from somewhere in the audience. That isn’t a particularly rare or unique thing to happen at a concert, especially during those quiet moments, but this profession of love seemed special nevertheless in how it contributed to a time that felt so magical and emotional. The beauty of it all can partially be attributed to Lorde; it was her kind words and the way she spoke to us, as if this was a one-on-one conversation and she wasn’t insanely famous. But here, I was also reminded of how much I love concerts and music. These interactions and connections between artists and fans are so precious, and it’s incredible how someone’s music might have had the power to impact someone else. It might be cheesy, but it’s true.
So yes, when Lorde asked us to dance for our 15-year-old selves on “Ribs,” I teared up a bit. And then came the flashing lights, pounding music you could feel in your bones, screaming of lyrics, and jumping up and down in some semblance of dancing. Catharsis never felt so good.
There was a similar rush of emotions for Lorde’s fantastic performance of “The Louvre.” She made a point of introducing the Melodrama track, teasing, “This is a song about a crush. That feeling of something brewing, that lightness in your limbs, that little thought in the back of your head saying ‘What if I took this where it wants to go?’”
Lorde performing at The Met Philadelphia on April 20th, 2022. Image sourced from https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/review-and-setlist-lorde-at-the-met/ar-AAWs6x3
“Will you sing it with me?”
Nevermind the fact that the song is the perfect crush anthem (Case in point: “A rush at the beginning / I get caught up, just for a minute” and “Can you hear the violence? / Megaphone to my chest / Broadcast the boom, boom, boom, boom”), but when Lorde asks you to sing with her, you sing.
I emerged from that song with an overwhelming appreciation for “The Louvre.”
The same can be said for “The Path.” I had a feeling it was going to be good hearing it live, and my expectations were far-exceeded. With a huge crowd of people singing and declaring together, “Now if you’re looking for a savior, well, that’s not me,” the opening track on Solar Power seriously had me smiling from ear to ear. On a related note, I rather like “The Path” as the album’s opener. It functions well as a conceptual introduction to Solar Power as a whole, rhythmically and lyrically encouraging this idea of turning to the sun and nature: “Let’s hope the sun will show us the path.”
And that brings us to the key album itself, Solar Power. To be frank, I don’t know anyone who says this is their favorite or best Lorde album, and I also don’t know anyone whose favorite Lorde song is from here. I don’t dislike Solar Power, far from it actually, but it’s a little underwhelming—especially in comparison to Pure Heroine and Melodrama. The problem might be that the album as a whole just isn’t compelling, and it largely struggles to make us actually feel something when listening. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy hearing the Solar Power songs live from the concert. They sounded great, I frequently felt transported to some sunny, magical beach, and the crowd was clearly having a good time.
Solar Power just isn’t her strongest work or showing. That’s something I can write objectively. Having said that, I more or less melt a little with how Lorde talks about it.
In the moments leading up to “Solar Power,” she dramatically built the title track up: “It’s a spell to summon good weather, but also a certain feeling, the feeling that warmth on your skin gives you, that feeling that anything is possible, that you could get away with anything if you tried. You know the feeling I’m talking about. And I feel that this spell works particularly well if a whole lot of people whisper it together. Do you want to try that with me, Philly? Alright.”
Maybe I’m just cheesy, easily swayed, and a sucker for anything sentimental. But I truly couldn’t help but like the song a little more after that.
And the Solar Power album set the scene for a fun night. For example, “Dominoes,” its eighth track, proved to be pleasantly memorable. The lyrics, “It’s strange to see you smoking marijuana / You used to do the most cocaine / Of anyone I’d ever met,” were sung by the crowd with an admirably enthusiastic fervor—a comically loud emphasis placed on the words “marijuana” and “cocaine.” Unsurprisingly, during Lorde’s performance of one of the album’s singles, “Stoned at the Nail Salon,” she coyly wished us all, on that night of April 20, “Happy 420 everyone.” The subsequent cheers were resounding. It’s also worth noting how we so passionately screamed a particular lyric from “Stoned at the Nail Salon.” There’s this melancholy, aching line rooted in self-reflection and moving on: “‘Cause all the music you loved at sixteen you’ll grow out of.” The way we yelled out those words, like a very loud, heavily implied assurance that we loved Lorde’s music at sixteen and at however old we were now, sticks with me still.
Philly was blessed with a three song encore. Hearing Lorde live had a freaky way of making me feel so self-affirmed and so seen, as well as very emotional—which is pretty much my favorite state to be in—so having Lorde for a smidge longer than expected was a real gift. Following phenomenal performances of “400 Lux” and the ever-iconic “Royals,” Lorde asked, “That was going to be our last song but I feel like you’re not going to let us leave. Do you want one more?” It was surreal.
“Team” was the perfect way to end the night. An all-time favorite from Pure Heroine, the song, much like the concert, was an experience—enthralling, empowering, and reverberating in its effect.