It is a triumph for her to be that successful and at the same time for most of us she displays a certain kind of awkwardness
This is what we call charisma, I mean every artist we discusses here, good or bad, have charisma but she has more than most of them, she is someone who will never have the elegance of a Beyoncé but could get in the future the same relevance as her and that's beautiful.
I like her album and understand that her songs usually have a lot of harmonies, but she really does overtly rely on backing tracks in live performances. It also doesn't help that she obviously hasn't received any vocal training on how to sing in her upper mid-range and upper register because she has a tendency to croak when she tries to sing in the upper 4th octave. Get that acclaim tho.
I like her album and understand that her songs usually have a lot of harmonies, but she really does overtly rely on backing tracks in live performances. It also doesn't help that she obviously hasn't received any vocal training on how to sing in her upper mid-range and upper register because she has a tendency to croak when she tries to sing in the upper 4th octave. Get that acclaim tho.
I don't necessarily think she relies on backing vocals any more than any other artist. It's just exacerbated and more obvious because the backing vocals are of her own voice pre-recorded rather than that of a live backing vocalist.
If you listen tho it's literally just the backing harmonies just like she uses on the album, and no main vocal whatsoever, so it's not like she's singing over the album track:
This is literally the exact harmony track she uses, for example:
[The crowd] are not bothered by the fact that she doesn't move like a pop star or dress like a pop star or have the elaborate stage setup of a pop star. They don't even mind that her songs aren't overproduced messes or that she sings about subjects that upper-class artists ignore. These are good things, because pop music needs someone like Lorde. Yeah, party-rocking and twerking may pack the arenas, but a sold-out crowd singing back more than just the hits makes a good argument that people care about what she has to say, too.
The beats are so solid that she regularly had the crowd -- girls, boys, men and women alike -- grooving to the music.
'A girl who's delighted to be here - and so were the people watching her.'
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Only once did Lorde seem as young as her 17 years. As she introduced "Ribs," a song about the aftermath of a particularly ruinous party at her parents' house, she mused on the passage from child- to adulthood, and whether one could exist in both worlds at once. "Can I still be a kid?" she asked. That the last word seemed absurd coming out of her mouth seemed to answer the question for her, but then she laid her eyes on the adoring crowd and added, "This is my job. It's so cool that I get to do this." Underneath her preternatural poise, there's still a girl who's delighted to be here - and so, on Saturday, were the people watching her.
'Her vocals were spot-on and impressively faithful to the recordings'
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As an artist and performer, Lorde certainly didn't disappoint last Friday at her sold-out show at Echostage; her vocals were spot-on and impressively faithful to the recordings that have saturated radio in recent months.
Lorde reigns in powerful show at Roseland Ballroom
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Lorde may say she'll never be royal, but her Roseland Ballroom show Monday night suggested that she's more than ready to rule gothic pop for quite some time.
The 17-year-old, Grammy-winning New Zealander is the center of attention throughout her powerful show. No dancers. No major light show. Her band is simply a drummer and a keyboard player, who also control the stacks of vocals that Lorde sings over to recreate the potent songs from her debut "Pure Heroine."
Lorde’s intense, illuminated, uncluttered Monday night concert — the first of three dates at the Midtown ballroom — was a study in transitions: light into darkness, youth into age, minimalism into maximalism, crowd-pleasing pop into sophisticated art and back again. It was smart, it was dramatic and, at 70 minutes, it was short.
But Lorde, who played every song on "Pure Heroine," can’t really be blamed for the brevity of the concert. Most artists do not headline a room as large as Roseland on their initial American tour. The New Zealander packed the house not merely because of the international success of "Royals," her confrontational summer smash, but also because of the belief that she is a popular musician with something to say.
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"Pure Heroine" is a complete statement; the concert shuffled the deck a bit with a few detours, but felt as coherent as a modern pop show can. As short as it was, there was no sense of things left unsaid. No wasted space, no static or showboating — just a message worth hearing from an artist who will stand at center stage for a long, long time.
This is the best review I've read, really well-written and detailed.
The 17-year-old New Zealand music sensation Lorde, whose real name is Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, sure lived up to the hype preceding her sold-out Sound Academy show on Saturday night.
In fact, she probably could have sold out two nights there in an even bigger venue.
Lorde, with her soulful voice and art-pop sound, put on a highly theatrical performance. Outfitted in white baggy clothes and wearing striking makeup (she has her own Mac line due out this summer), she did a herky-jerky dance with lots of hair flipping and rhythmic arm gestures.
It's a little before 11 p.m. Friday at the sold out Orpheum when Lorde finishes a stirring rendition of "Royals," the recent Grammy winner for song of the year. The crowd erupts in a loud, extended ovation that seems to shake the walls in this historic, old theater. Clearly, a star is born.
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Her choice of covers -- the Replacements' "Swingin' Party" and Son Lux's excellent "Easy" -- were unexpected and well-done. The prerecorded backing vocals fleshed out the songs nicely.
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This young lady is something special, and it will be fascinating to watch her career blossom as she matures. She truly is a queen bee.
Lorde, dressed all in black, gripped the crowd from the first moment of opener “Glory and Gore,” with its dynamic peaks and valleys percolating in time with the flashing lights and the declaration “victory’s contagious” setting the night’s mood of defiance and celebration.
