Concert Reviews
“We always have the best time here. I feel really understood here,” Lorde said at her TD Garden show on Friday, Sept. 27.
Lorde with The Japanese House and Blood Orange at TD Garden, Boston, Sept. 26, 2025.
In a pop landscape dominated by pyrotechnics, high-flying acrobatics, and spectacle-for-spectacle’s-sake, Lorde’s “Ultrasound Tour” — her first since 2022 — lands like a resonant thunderclap.
At TD Garden on Friday night, the 28-year-old New Zealander offered a performance that was raw, deliberate, and bracingly intimate, inviting her audience not just to watch her, but to witness her undoing.
English artists The Japanese House and Blood Orange opened for Lorde before her show, setting the tone with atmospheric pop and soulful vibes before her headlining performance.
Wearing a plain purple tee and baggy jeans, Lorde walked onto the bare, futuristic stage and launched into “Hammer,” the throbbing opener from “Virgin,” her 2025 album that melds bodily autonomy, MDMA-fueled makeout sessions, and rebirth into one synth-drenched manifesto. From the jump, it was clear that this wasn’t going to be a traditional pop show — and that was the point.
If earlier tours found Lorde playing the part of the reluctant pop-oracle, “Virgin” has her stripping that role away entirely — literally and figuratively.
During “Current Affairs,” she peeled off her shoes and unbuttoned her jeans to reveal dark blue Calvin Klein boxers. It wasn’t a costume change; it was a transfiguration. The act was unglamorous and unguarded, one of many moments that blurred the line between performance and confession.
“Sometimes, when you start making music when you’re 14, you write kind of cool, dumb shit that is physically impossible to sing,” she admitted to the crowd. ‘Ultrasound’ is about going to all the corners,” she added. The arena glowed under the fluorescents, and for a fleeting moment, Lorde was no longer the elusive indie-pop enigma. She was Ella. She was one of us.
‘This is really special being back here’
Backed by two dancers and a band nestled below stage level in low-lit pockets, the spotlight belonged solely to her. There was little choreography — more like kinetic intuition. She strutted. She flailed. She collapsed.
During “Supercut,” a treadmill materialized on stage, and Lorde jogged in time with the pounding beat, repeating, “In my head, I do everything right,” before doubling over in exhaustion. It was physical catharsis made visible — a kind of gym-floor exorcism that felt both absurd and devastating.
“This is really special being back here. There are so many of us in here. I take none of this for granted, Boston,” Lorde said to the crowd.
While the set list pulled from all four of her albums, “Virgin” took center stage. “Man of the Year,” arguably the night’s emotional apex, saw her duct-taping her chest onstage and singing shirtless, draped only in a silver chain. The camera captured her every movement in stark, glitchy close-ups projected across massive screens. It wasn’t about provocation — it was about embodiment. Gender, identity, sexuality, control; she carried them all in her voice, and in her skin.
“We always have the best time here. I feel really understood here, actually,” Lorde said.
Lorde descends into the crowd for finale
Of course, there were nods to the past. “Royals,” her breakout hit from 2013, arrived surprisingly early in the night, as the second song on the setlist. “Ribs,” the fan favorite from Pure Heroine, closed the night, performed from a small platform near the soundboard, her figure silhouetted in a single, searing beam of light. As the last notes faded, she reached toward the beam, her hand catching it briefly, and then it disappeared.
Before that, she descended into the crowd for “David,” a wrenching ballad that reaches its cathartic, chaotic climax with vibrating synths. Cloaked in a jacket made of LED panels, she moved slowly down the arena floor, fans parting to make way for her. “Why do we run to the ones we do?” she sang into the microphone, “I don’t belong to anyone.”
The Ultrasound Tour isn’t just a concert — it’s a kind of revelation. There are no aerial stunts, no glitzy visuals, no glam squad waiting in the wings. Instead, Lorde offers something far more radical in 2025: honesty. She doesn’t perform for you — she performs with you. And by the time the lights illuminate the stadium, you leave not just dazzled, but seen.
Setlist for Lorde at TD Garden on Sept. 26, 2025:
Act I
- Hammer
- Royals
- Broken Glass
- Buzzcut Season
- Favorite Daughter
- Perfect Places
Act II
- Shapeshifter
- Current Affairs
- Supercut
- No Better
- GRWM
- The Louvre
Act III
- Oceanic Feeling
- Big Star
- Liability
- Clearblue
- Man of the Year
Act IV
Ribs
If She Could See Me Now
Team
What Was That
Green Light
David
A World Alone
Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.
