At stripped-down Toronto show, Lorde lets nothing get between her and the audience | Canada Voices

If you’re a female pop star in 2025 and you’re not surrounded by a dozen dancers or flying around the arena in a chariot wearing a sequined onesie, are you even trying?

Lorde was more than trying at the Toronto stop of her Ultrasound world tour on Wednesday – she was keeping it real. We have seen stripped-down performances before, but nothing quite like this.

There was more to it than the 28-year-old New Zealander simply shucking off her faded blue jeans, leaving her in just a white T-shirt and dark Calvin Klein boxers. Actually, there was nothing simple about it: The unsexy gesture was all about peeling back layers and presenting her true, natural self.

“A couple of years ago I decided I wasn’t going to hide anything from you, I wasn’t gonna juice it up,” she said deep into her unadulterated concert at Scotiabank Arena, kneeling as she addressed the audience. “I believe, Toronto, it’s my job to show myself to you exactly as I am. To tell the story with as much honesty and rawness as I can.”

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The evening of electro sounds and minimalist art-pop began with Hammer, off her 2025 album Virgin (the one with the pelvic X-ray cover art). She has said the song is an “ode to city life and horniness,” as well as ovulation, flirting, immense gratitude to being alive and the sound of her rebirth.

I might have been born again

I’m ready to feel like I don’t have the answers

There’s peace in the madness

Let it carry me u-u-u-u-up

The reborn singer-songwriter carried on with her 2013 breakthrough hit Royals, a catchy satire on social status that still slaps. She sang it almost casually, with her hands in the pockets of her jeans. By placing the song early in the set, Lorde was putting it behind her.

Though she often shared the stage with two dancers, there didn’t seem to be a lot of scripted choreography at work. Lorde moved around like a teenager grooving alone in front of her bedroom mirror − pure, beautiful abandon.

The lighting was stark and unflattering, rendering her pale skin nearly translucent. At times, she sang without the assistance of vocal effects. Introducing No Better, she said it was “just about physically impossible to sing,” but that the tour was “about getting close to the edge.”

Indeed, she was pitchy on No Better. It wasn’t a glitch, it was the point.

She worked out on a treadmill during Supercut − a woman at the gym. Hiking up her shirt for GRWM allowed for a video camera close-up of her bare torso on the giant screen behind her, leaving no doubt that her belly button was of the innie variety.

This was anti-glam, with no conspicuous melodrama − just a high-intensity airing of feelings her fans can relate to, dance to, or use for their weekly spin classes. The performer was uncommonly generous. Let’s call Lorde the Bruce Springsteen of Taylor Swifts.

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She ventured onto the arena floor to brush shoulders with the crowd during the brooding relationship ballad David: “And what came spilling out that day was the truth …” She kept on walking to perform the concert-closing Ribs on a platform near the soundboard, fans at her feet.

I suppose I was one of the few people in attendance alive in 1980, when a 15-year-old Brooke Shields starred in a creepy television commercial for Calvin Klein jeans, complete with the risqué tagline: “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”

Same with Lorde. Nothing got between her and her audience.

Lorde plays Montreal’s Bell Centre on Saturday.