Lorde
The announcement way back in June that Lorde would wrap the North American leg of her tour at Bridgestone Arena got The Spin uncharacteristically giddy. It came stacked on top of her performance at Bonnaroo — outstanding despite some technical difficulties — and the release of her rich and intense second album Melodrama. And despite the gig being damned near a year out from us getting the word, the excitement hadn’t dimmed a bit when the show finally rolled around on Sunday. We were all smiles as we suited up to brave an unseasonably wintry Tennessee evening to check out the latest from one of our favorite pop stars of the past decade.
Run the Jewels
As we wandered toward our seats through the ’Stone’s glossy, cavernous halls — still vibrating with residual energy from the Nashville Predators’ 5-4 win the day before in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs — we learned we’d already missed out on warm-up act Mitski. But the inimitable rumble of hip-hop champs Run the Jewels spurred us to make a swift jog for it. The powerhouse duo is a bold choice for an opening act. We've seen their bombastic, life-affirming sets many times at clubs, auditoriums and festivals, and so it came as no surprise that Killer Mike and El-P could get an entire arena eating out of their hands, even during an opening set.
The duo can come across like cold-blooded lyrical assassins on tracks like the unabashedly ferocious DJ Shadow collab “Nobody Speak.” But between songs, the humanism comes out, and they become two of our favorite ambassadors for a better tomorrow. When Mike and El-P weren’t praising the contributions of women or shouting out every member of their crew by name, they delivered impassioned monologues on kindness and loved ones lost and a heart-warming happy birthday to their sound engineer Tomas.
Lorde
After a short intermission, the lights dimmed and the familiar off-kilter voice loop from Lorde’s “Sober” echoed through the relatively full house, inspiring a roar of praise. Flanked by a phalanx of dancers, the intimidatingly precocious New Zealand-born diva began an intense journey that was everything we could hope for from an arena-scale show. Every song in her catalog is either an anthem by design or has the potential to become one when thousands of fans get added to the mix. Waves of booming synths washed over the room and moved the crowd in an almost involuntary sway, as the singer rolled out nearly every choice pop hymn she’s recorded. Minimal pep-rally jams like “Buzzcut Season” and “Tennis Court” from her debut Pure Heroine were carefully meshed with the more mature highlights from Melodrama and epic one-offs like her Disclosure collaboration “Magnets” and “Yellow Flicker Beat” from the Hunger Games soundtrack. It all came together in an intense sing-along that made the extended interludes between each song increasingly necessary to accommodate Lorde’s dynamic presence.
Moody drones and soft, cool-colored lights bathed the stage as the dancers moved in and out of a transparent box that floated periodically around the space. The 21-year-old singer connected the songs with banter focused on her experience of writing them. On paper, that sounds like a nightmare, and some artists we’ve seen just can’t pull it off, but Lorde used her immense crowd-winning talent to make it immersive. She delivered it with the feel of an intimate chat over brunch, albeit one with a few thousand fans.
The victory lap at the end of the main set consisted of a trifecta of total bangers: Lorde’s breakout hit “Royals,” “Perfect Places” (a song about the bliss of being young and wasted, which we’re sure resonated with most of this crowd) and last year’s cathartic and theatrical “Green Light.” Then came the encore with a spellbinding Music City twist: A rendition of “Leavin’ on Your Mind,” backed only by a guitar and styled after Patsy Cline’s heartbreaking version.
As the whole thing came to a close in a hail of star-shaped confetti, the taste was bittersweet. This particular spectacle was over, and if experience is any guide, we’ll be seeing a totally new version of Lorde the next time she comes through. But it’s still ultra-gratifying to get to watch this kind of talent develop over time, and there’s no reason not to expect her next evolution to be even more fascinating.
See our slideshow for more photos.
In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.
