Normcore Lorde was most definitely in the house last night. She said so herself while describing her two days off in Florida.
“I went for a swim in the Gulf of Mexico, had a frozen drink on the beach,” she explained before a take on “Buzzcut Season,” from her 2013 album Pure Heroine. “It’s such a beautiful part of the world.”
Lorde — born Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor in New Zealand all of 21 years ago — even spent some time at the movies while she was in Tampa Bay. She caught an epic 44-minute nap in the dark of the theater before running into some fans.
"They were both so nice, and they caught me right after sleeping in a movie," she said as she sipped water before a take on “Writer In The Dark” from last year’s, Grammy-nominated Melodrama. "That's when I'm a less inspiring version of myself.”
But by admitting to all that pina colada and night-in-at-the-cinema basicness, Ella humanized and undressed herself, showing a room of her fishnet-wearing, pink and (literally) blue-haired folks that she — in so many ways — is just like them.
“I'm a long way from home so the fact that I'm in Tampa and there's a room full of people that want to hang out with me is amazing,” she said. “I'm so grateful.”
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There was a lot to grateful for on Wednesday night, too. The show, arriving nearly a half-decade after the release of her breakthrough single, “Royals,” was Lorde’s Tampa debut, and it arrived packaged in with a performance from D.I.Y. darling, Mitski, whose stripped-down set allowed for an arresting vocal to fill Amalie Arena while fans trickled in. Run The Jewels — a hip-hop megagroup featuring DJ Trackstar, EL-P and Killer Mike — filled out the middle of the night with a set that was relatively tame when held against the one the trio put together at Jannus Live last year.
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“I wanna thank the parents who bought their children today. You're awesome,” EL-P said after having an amped up run through Run The Jewels 3 highlight “Call Ticketron.” The 43-year-old Def Jux rapper, however, was pretty frank with those cool parents.
“At some point this evening you're gonna have to have to the RTJ talk,” he said. “They're gonna learn how to curse, but might as well learn from the best.”
Full transparency was kind of the theme of the night. Lorde’s stage production was minimal compared to some of the other arena spectacles which have come through Amalie over the last year (read: Gaga). Still, she was able to shrink the room (albeit with the help of a draped-over upper bowl) and get into the heads and hearts of her faithful fans who sang along to every word of songs like “Homemade Dynamite,” “400 Lux” and even a cover of Frank Ocean’s “Solo.” Another cover (Disclosure’s “Magnets”) featured deep, hypnotizing bass, and Lorde had everyone in the palm of her hand by the time she stepped into a plexiglass shipping container to change out of a black-sequined jumper and into a billowing white dress for “The Louvre,” a song which found dancers carrying her across the stage in a performance that reminded the audience that pop music can most definitely double as art. The dizzying stereo mix in the PA on “Hard Feelings” made the sparse setup (a couple of keyboards, guitar) make even more sense, and watching Lorde dance barefoot and bodaciously bound across the stage on “Yellow Flicker Beat” was a joy.
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In her simplicity, it’s easy to forget that Lorde (who is what, all of 5 feet 5 inches tall,?) is the same pop tour-de-force who told the Grammys to shove it and then caused an uproar when she cancelled a tour date in Tel Aviv. Watching her and an MPC work through “Loveless” was a reminder of the prowess, however, and her pristine, pretty much perfect, croon — coupled with a dose of tropicalia on “Precious Metals” — made her look and sound a little immortal after she stood behind a curtain of blue light, blowing kisses at the crowd in her bright red jumpsuit.
Lorde brought it back down to earth for an encore-closing performance of “Team” and then meandered off the stage and into the photo pit to hug and talk to fans. At one point she clutched a fans hand and gratefully kissed it. There’s a story about another Lord washing the feet of his followers; the tale is supposed to teach people about humility or something like that. Watching Lorde work through that 18-song set on Wednesday was a reminder that even the world’s biggest pop stars can come back down to earth, connect with fans and still make it look like a work of art, too.