The Cambridge Dictionary defines “melodrama” in American English as a work in which the characters “behave and show emotion in a more noticeable way than real people usually do.”
While listening to Lorde’s album Melodrama, it certainly can seem like 21-year-old Ella Yelich-O'Connor feels emotion deeper than most people. To me, the word “melodrama” implies a whole slew of emotions on the spectrum of every single thing it’s possible to feel, and Lorde’s set list had moments of all of them: happiness, pain, rebellion, confusion and, yes, drama.
However, while her songs echoed through the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio March 31 during the Melodrama World Tour: North American Dance, all of the pain from her songs on her heartbreak record seemed to dissipate as overwhelming feelings of freedom and happiness overtook me. I suddenly felt that I was free to dance, sing and enjoy her show in any way I wanted. Despite the thousands of other people singing, screaming and surrounding me, I felt that I was comfortably alone. It was as if I had tunnel vision that encompassed only my father—who came to the show with me—and Lorde herself.
But even more prominent than all that, as Lorde sang song after song, I felt understood.
Lorde’s lyrics have always been relatable to me, both from my high school days of Pure Heroine and my college evenings of Melodrama. Both albums’ lyrics include small details of Lorde’s life that may seem mundane if they didn’t somehow provide raw insight into what it’s like to grow up, love someone or go through a breakup.
In her songs, she writes things that I’ve felt but have never thought to try to put into words. As a writer, it takes a lot for me to so sincerely feel that way about a song. Usually the ideas in songs at least sound familiar to me. But it’s not necessarily that the ideas in Lorde’s music seem unfamiliar, though; in some contradictory way, it’s the opposite: the concepts she sings about sound like new breakthroughs to me even though they’re familiar because I’ve felt them all before. It’s as if she knew my life and decided to write down the details that I let pass by.
But hearing these songs live for the first time took them a few steps further for me.
Things hit me harder than they ever did through my speakers at home. It was as if I knew Lorde personally—not quite as a friend, but as some bizarre form of counselor that came into my life for one evening just to say “Hey, have you felt like this before? Because I have, too, so I guess we’re not alone.”
It seems silly to me even as I write it—suggesting that it’s unique that the music being sung to a whole stadium is relatable. But something Lorde did really took it to the extreme, making her show seem intimate.
Lorde opened with “Sober,” the second song on Melodrama. She echoed the harrowing feeling of realizing a relationship is falling apart by standing towards the back of the stage in shadows. The lights shone on modern dancers who joined Lorde on stage throughout the night, displaying the emotions of the songs through dance.
Her set list bounded gracefully between picks from Pure Heroine and Melodrama, and her energy never dwindled. She danced all night as if she couldn’t convey it all through words alone. She talked to the crowd casually, asking about everyone’s love lives and what college is like as if she expected individual responses. She seemed genuinely thrilled with the vibe of the stadium that night—since every crowd has “a different heartbeat”— and laughed every time the crowd finished her thickly accented “O-H” with a shouted “I-O.”
An unquestionable highlight, about halfway through her set, Lorde sang “Hard Feelings.” On Melodrama, it’s a six-minute two-part song: “Hard Feelings/ Loveless.” The first part is about a devastating breakup; it describes it from right before the words are spoken to the time spent after, healing. The second part is an upbeat, sarcastic threat of revenge. Splitting these songs up on the set list created a more powerful effect than I could have imagined. As “Hard Feelings” began to fade out with the lyric “I’ll start letting go of little things till I’m so far away from you,” the stage went dark. There was no upbeat song coming next; instead, it was just over. I’m so used to hearing the biting beginning to “Loveless” right after, with “Bet you wanna rip my heart out/ Bet you wanna skip my calls now./ Well guess what?/ I like that./ Cuz I’m gonna mess your life up./ Gonna wanna tape my mouth shut.” But instead, the audience was left with the ending of a song about utter heartbreak lingering throughout the room—finished, complete, over.
Later on, Lorde slowed her show down for a bit with some songs from her favorite genre: “songs about being alone.” She showcased her range and sang “Writer In The Dark,” “Solo” by Frank Ocean and “Liability” before shifting the energy back from sad to dramatic and bizarre with “Sober II (Melodrama).”
She ended the show with a group of songs that would be comparable to the popular kids’ clique if we were still in the Pure Heroine days: “Royals,” “Perfect Places” and “Green Light.” It was somehow possible for the energy in the room to grow even greater, and it did. I took a moment to glance around during “Royals,” and everyone, including myself and my father, was dancing ridiculously, letting the music carry them every which way. It was weird, which made it fit right in, and it was beautiful.
An encore performance included “Loveless,” an unreleased Melodrama song “Precious Metals” and “Team.” During “Team,” Lorde walked around the front row, giving out high-fives and hugs to nearly everyone, further connecting her to the crowd.
All in all, Lorde’s Melodrama World Tour: North American Dance was not only appropriately named, but also entirely enthralling from start to finish. She made a stadium concert feel like an intimate show, and she created an emotional connection to the crowd through her songs. An illustration to conclude: right before “Green Light,” Lorde requested that every person in the crowd put all of their joy, pain, jealousy and pettiness into the next song and just let everything go.
When “Green Light” was released in March 2017, over a year before I saw it performed live, I used to play it aloud any time I was alone and be the embodiment of dancing like no one’s watching, because no one was watching. My dance moves looked awkward, I’m sure, but I wouldn’t have known, because I wasn’t looking at them in a mirror: my eyes were usually closed; I used to fall into the song so deeply. It wasn’t for any other reason than that I liked the song, really, and I was excited that Lorde had finally released new music. But then somewhere along the line as the months went on, I thought about the fact that the song that spurred my own private dance parties was actually really sad. So then my new routine became playing it while I drove and crying in the car. I’m sure that if I had any jealousy or pettiness to put into the song, I would’ve done it at some point throughout the past year as well. But my point is this: as I stood in the audience that night, I had all of these memories of me putting intense emotions into this song in the back of my mind. And all of that joyous dancing I did in March of 2017 just because it felt right returned to me in March of 2018, because the atmosphere that Lorde created in the Schottenstein Center that night just felt right.
