It’s a Saturday evening and it’s raining sideways, but several hundred Lorde fans don’t give a shit. The musician—government name Ella Yelich-O’Connor—has announced via her fan WhatsApp group that something is about to happen in London, but she won’t say what, where, or exactly when. “Shall we link tn?” she asks.
Even when the thousands of inevitable responders shout “YES,” less than 300 receive a response. Many on the /lorde subreddit go into meltdown and beg for +1s. Some cancel dates. Others jump off trains set to leave the country in the hopes that they might get a last-minute invite.
Either way, we know it will be something to do with Virgin, her fourth—so far tough and feral-sounding—record that’s due to drop on 27th June.
Alas, when I arrive at Drumsheds, the chosen venue in the north London suburb of Tottenham (on the same night as Beyoncé, who was playing a short walk away), I’m the first one here, about 40 minutes before the door opens. I can hear “What Was That?” blaring from inside the venue—a former IKEA that’s become a musical Mecca for London pillheads.
Slowly, dribs and drabs of people show up. Sarah is first: She lives nearby and was in the middle of making her dinner when she found out she’d got the ticket. “There were people plotting to come from other cities and I was like, chill,” she says, shrugging. Shortly after, a TikToker called Guy and his bestie, Shelly, arrive, having shielded from the rain in a Tesco Extra across the road for the last hour. “I want [the new music] to sound like whatever she wants it to sound like,” Shelly says diplomatically.
Kajal comes right behind them. She got her confirmation at 3:50 today and made it down in just over two hours. “Lorde’s a late-night person,” she says, “why’s she playing at seven?!” Her friend was supposed to come but couldn’t make it. She’s hoping to hear something that sounds like “Ribs.”
Eventually, it seems like enough fans have got the memo. The line is growing, and the direction to “dress up warm” has been received. Rory, a friend of mine, is coming with me, but he’s been partying at Club Are—a queer rave that was just kicking off—when he jumped on a train to make it here. He told me he couldn’t miss it, having met Ella four times previously (including once, 12 years ago, when she released Pure Heroine). I ask to see all the pictures he has of them together.
More and more people pile off of a bus that’s just arrived, 15 minutes before the doors open. “That’s just the superbus of us,” Rory says. I wonder if he’s taken drugs.
There were these two young women who have rocked up—Lucy and Alice. Lucy is alone and Alice is waiting for her plus one, so I chat to them together to help them vibe and break the ice. Lucy is a veteran (this will be the eighth or ninth time she’d been in Ella’s presence) whereas Alice saw her live for the first time when she toured Solar Power. “I want it to feel euphoric,” Lucy says, “She’s ageing and she’s wiser. I’m ageing with her, which is what I always love. I’m about two years younger than her, so whenever she releases her albums, it feels like she’s exactly in the same phase of life I’m in too.”
What does Lucy think this whole thing was? “I don’t know, a foot massage? With some Lorde songs, maybe?”
Leila, who comes armed with good snacks (Nerds gummy clusters from America: “They have the Red 40 in ‘em”), thinks it’s going to be like when Lorde shut down Washington Square Park earlier this year—a mix of something old and something new. They reckon about 1 in 5 of the people who applied for tickets were successful, purely because they asked five people to apply and only one got added to the list. Love that logic!
Okay, doors open. Wristbands on. Phones bagged and confiscated. (The whole thing is streamed live on TikTok anyway.) We all run to grab a space around a stepladder, surrounded by four cars with the lights on inside. Ella arrives, Ella dances, Ella sings—hanging from the stepladder, belting “What Was That?”. She hugs fans, stands on the bonnet of a car, and feels every word of “Man of the Year,” and previews three new songs from Virgin. Only one is announced by its title, “Clearblue,” an Imogen Heap-esque song about gestation. The others are big and loud as hell. (I’ll bite my tongue so you can listen and love yourself in a few weeks.)
The swelling, euphoric, and surprising centerpiece is, as Leila predicted, something old: Pure Heroine’s “Ribs”—maybe still the best song she’s ever written. 300 fans, all entangled in Ella, in each other, screaming that song—it feels special. People cry real tears. Ella holds them as it happens. And as soon as she’s played those songs and danced with us, she’s gone, and everyone is left confounded by the fact they’d just spent 20 minutes with the legendary musician Lorde in a Tottenham IKEA car park.
Outside, people came back to life, trying to process it. Each attendee clutches a parking receipt, individually numbered and listing the location: “Virgin Parking Ltd.”
Some form a circle to dance to “Supercut,” and one guy stacks it when he runs to join in. I ask a few folks to try and articulate it. Rory tries: “It was beautiful, and it was blue, mostly, with a little bit of red.”
“I don’t know what to do with myself,” one girl named Emma says. Her friend Chloe concurred: “I think I blacked out.”
Two well-dressed individuals are posing with their parking tickets by the gate. Their names are Lily and Zel. “I think so many people online have been saying, like, oh my gosh, this is Melodrama part two,” Lily says. “But no, this feels like a completely different project. And that’s exciting.”
For Zel, as a transmasc person, the weight of hearing “Man of the Year” in Ella’s presence feels special. They are having a moment and I feel like I’m intruding a little, but they insist they’re keen to talk. “Without hearing their music, I don’t think I’d be at this point [in my life],” Zel says. “Now seeing there’s a whole new level to that is so crazy and so cool. Having someone that big sing so openly about gender expression is so refreshing.” Ella’s described Virgin as a sonic accompaniment to a personal rebirth. “It feels so in line with where I’m at currently in my life. I’m excited to hear the album and be able to hear her perspective, and see how that reflects with my own.”
Rory is back off to the club, ordering his Uber to make sure he gets back before the 10 p.m. last-entry call. But he is still thinking about what he’d heard, with the shared perspective of all of these people who were part of that weirdly profound encounter. “She spent two albums [with Pure Heroine and Melodrama] really communicating, being a conduit for people’s feelings,” he says. “Even as the music moves on from that, the relationship remains. Everyone’s willing to go with her, wherever she wants to go.”
lead video LORDE ON TIKTOK