In Montreal, Lorde strips it all back- jeans, white t-shirt, bravado – turning a career milestone into a raw, glitter-dusted reckoning with self, sound, and spectatorship.
Twelve years to the day after releasing Pure Heroine, Lorde returned to the stage in Montreal on September 27, 2025, to mark the milestone in her own understated way. “I am 12 years old,” she told the crowd, a wry nod to the anniversary that felt equal parts celebration and self-mythology.
Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, known globally as Lorde, has long been synonymous with a certain lyrical intimacy, threading vulnerability and curiosity through a sound that blurs electro-pop with the sensitivity of indie confessionals.
Her latest album, Virgin, released June 27, 2025, continues in that spirit. It’s spare, searching, and surprisingly confrontational, circling themes of identity, softness, and the shapeshifting nature of gender expression. There’s less polish here, more pulse.
The Ultrasound Tour carries that same energy. In Montreal, the stage was left intentionally bare—no backdrop, no spectacle. Lorde rose slowly into view and moved without choreography, as if following instinct alone. She played twenty-four songs: eleven from Virgin, six from Pure Heroine, five from Melodrama, and two from Solar Power. The set felt less like a performance and more like a private rehearsal made public—unguarded, charged, quietly captivating.
Text by Mia Moudilou & copyedited by Louis Alson & Sarah-Eve Leduc
Photos by Louis Alson
Lorde said, during a Therapuss with Jake Shane podcast*, that the album was very uncomfortable to make, as it demanded a lot of vulnerability. The lyrics are raw, with storytelling that is deeply personal and vivid. The term “virgin” is often associated with themes such as fragility, newness, and raw honesty, which are reflected in her album. She revealed that the album originally had a different name, but late into the process, “Virgin” felt truer. She chose to keep the alternative option private in case she wanted to use it in a future project.
Lorde’s set was multifaceted, with unique segments for every song she performed. It was as if every song was a scene in a movie. For “Broke Glass,” she explored concepts of body image and unhealthy beauty standards for women, which Lorde showed visually by removing her first article of clothing, her belt, during a punchy lyric in the song: “I spent my summer getting lost in math.” This could be interpreted as symbolic, considering the purpose of a belt is to make larger clothes fit better. Another beautifully staged segment was her walking on a treadmill while singing “Supercut,” which represented the rush of adrenaline that comes with being a teenager and also parallels the stress of discovering oneself. During “David,” she moved through the crowd as a projection behind her alternated between live footage of her performing in the moment and pre-recorded clips of her alone in the same arena earlier that day. The contrast between the full, electric stadium and the silent, empty venue created a striking visual metaphor for vulnerability and transformation. This visual motif has since become a signature element of the tour.
By beginning the show in a plain white T-shirt and Levi’s jeans, Lorde invited her fans to mirror the same look. The choice encouraged the audience to appear without embellishment, offering a kind of “blank canvas” in contrast to a culture obsessed with performance and presentation. Seeing strangers dressed alike in simple clothing underscored the shared humanity in the room and reflected the core themes of Virgin: authenticity, vulnerability, and the freedom to be exactly who you are. Later, during “No Better,” she peeled off her jeans to reveal red boxer briefs, a symbolic nod to both feminine and masculine identity. Close-ups of her glitter-dusted body, captured on handheld camera and projected onto the arena screens, emphasized freedom and self-expression as she sprinted across the stage freely and carelessly.
The album cover for Virgin features an X-ray of Lorde’s pelvis, revealing her IUD. Before the Ultrasound Tour took shape, she often sent the X-ray emoji to friends in moments when she felt understood. The image became a symbol of self-recognition, both a personal marker and an invitation. It reflects her impulse to look inward for identity, while also allowing others to glimpse the physical and emotional layers she chooses to share.
The distance between her and her fans broke at the halfway mark of the show when she performed “David,” a song inspired by Michelangelo’s marble sculpture of the same name. A story is often told that Michelangelo, when asked how he created his sculptures, said he simply chiseled away everything that wasn’t necessary. Similarly, Lorde encapsulated the search for identity and becoming through this song, as she gracefully moved through the pit, ultimately arriving at a smaller B-stage to perform more intimate songs.
Before singing her last song on the B stage, Lorde introduced it by saying, “It’s the oldest one I got, probably gonna fucking cry to it with you!” Her first song ever, “Ribs,” followed, and the crowd inside the stadium shared a timeless ode to the teenage experience, one that has seeped into, and remains part of, every stage of life. “Ribs” encapsulates the fear of the unknown that comes with getting older as well as the complexity of identity during that time. It also captures the dread of teenage thrills slipping away. In support, her most recent album, Virgin, is the older version of the self: a record shaped by growth and transformation. As her most mature work yet, it celebrates authenticity by embracing uniqueness, flaws, and revelations alike.
Lorde’s authenticity resonated deeply with the audience. Before singing the final song of the night, “Liability,” she shared an intimate reflection: “I felt incredibly alone, always. I was an island.” A fan shouted back, “We love you,” to which a loud chorus of cheers followed, leaving Lorde clearly moved, realizing the strength of the community she had built around her.
Lorde’s concert in Montreal was an evening full of voices celebrating identity and authenticity. As Lorde herself put it: “An hour and forty-five minutes worth of anything in common; with this many other people – it’s beautiful.”
Listen to *Shane, J. (Host). (January 2025). Session 76: Lorde [Audio podcast episode]. In Therapuss with Jake Shane on YouTube. https://youtu.be/9YWnzz56Iz4
