I Finally Got the Green Light to See Lorde

Performance Review and Opinion: Lorde at Governors Ball 2026, Day 1

Written by Camila Molina | June 13, 2026 | Photos Courtesy of Grandstand Media

This article contains strong language, including direct quotes from performers. The language has been retained to accurately reflect the tone, message, and emotional intensity of the performance. Reader discretion is advised.

Photo By Roger Ho

Concert videos never do the magic of a live performance justice. That, combined with my destroyed attention span, means I find myself struggling to sit through concert videos, even for artists I adore. But last summer, Lorde's Glastonbury Festival performance would not disappear from my YouTube feed. Like many people my age, I have been trying to be more intentional about what I engage with online after what has felt like years of being told what I am supposed to like or think, etc., but these suggested videos would not let up. Thank God I gave in.

Never have I had such FOMO in my life. On my couch, the electricity of the show somehow shone through, reminding me of the yearning I felt as a little girl to be immersed in the live music scene. I am not even a consistent fan of her music, but neither was a good friend of mine, who went to a Lorde show in 2025, and her exact words were, "THIS is music."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhnV09nx6ao

Though it may seem a bit unreasonable, given that as I write this I still have not explored Lorde's full discography, I decided my new mission was to see her perform live. I wanted to see what my friend meant by "this is music" and, more importantly, see if that electricity I witnessed and felt was simply from Glastonbury’s crowd or a Lorde live music specialty.

So, despite thinking I would maybe take a break from covering Gov Ball this year, when I saw her name on the lineup, I knew I would finally get my answer.

I arrived early and decided to leverage the access my press pass gave me to the VIP section, which tends to be less crowded, with the knowledge that I could not write much of a review from the back of the crowd at 5'1".

The crowd was dedicated. As soon as KATSEYE closed with their long-awaited performance of "Gnarly," while many ran out of the crowd, nearly just as many pushed in around me. Even on exhausted legs, I held my post dedicated to a good view of Lorde. I think we all felt the same, given that I was surrounded by other brave souls crouching but highly aware not to have their spots overtaken. Many of us would not fully sit on the ground wet with what I hope was water. As time passed, it was funny to see us all accept our fate and finally give ourselves a rest, while still remaining on alert.

Remaining vigilant for the many people pushing through, we patiently waited. The art of concert etiquette and "hugging the wall" to get to where you're going allegedly died after COVID-19, or maybe it was always this way and we just don't remember life before the pandemic.

Surrounding me were arguments over whose spot was whose and complaints about legs hurting. 

I entertained myself while waiting by watching the group next to me play "Guess Who?" My spot also improved because a mother and her son left. I think the son just wanted to know what it was like to “camp out” at barricade and didn't actually care to see Lorde. This softened the tension, at least for me.

As the show began, chants of "LORDE" drowned out Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Appearing on the stage screens was some sort of vital signs monitor, revealing heart rate and blood pressure. The BP was nearly perfect, which, if it was reflecting the actual stats of Lorde, is beyond impressive for someone about to perform to the sea of people that were present for the show. Lorde comes out wearing EKG electrodes, or some sort of cardiac monitoring sensors, as the crowd bursts with excitement. There may have been a deeper meaning behind this opening, and at the risk of sounding clueless, if there was, it went right over my head. Looking it up before publishing this feels like cheating, so let's move on.

The performance began with incredibly catchy, rhythmic electronic music playing alongside the lyrics, "Don't invest / Don't invest in me, I'm all alone," from an unreleased track that I am eagerly waiting for, as I couldn't help but move to this despite my promise to myself to stay focused on my review (a promise that you will see broken many times throughout this review; please take it as a sign of how poignant the performance was). 

As she sings "all alone," she approaches a DJ deck, her voice in a more electronically influenced style than I have typically heard from what I know of her genre-blending music. It seemed to be altered with some sort of vocal processing. Still, her voice, through what I believe is stylistic auto-tune, is a powerhouse.

She then transitioned into her 2013 hit "Royals," with the processed vocals now removed. However, she cuts the song short on the lyric "fantasy," which, with the nostalgic feel of a Lorde performance, the blue hue that kept filling the screen, and a bit of an exhausted haze, is likely what this experience felt like to all of us.

This transition from an unreleased song to a song over a decade old would serve as the introduction to a constant emotional push and pull that would persist throughout the rest of the performance. 

Then, an electro-pop transition filled the air. As soon as even a second of "What Was That" started playing, the park was filled with screams. On the screen, we can see close-ups of Lorde so clearly that I can see every bead of sweat on her face. The song built up with Lorde standing in the middle of the stage before moving to an interpretive dance with stiff movements between verses, moving to jumping all over the stage after the fan-favorite lyrics, "Baby, what was that?" We joined her in this release. Whoever said people don't dance at shows anymore has not seen Lorde live. I was starting to feel that electricity that I got a glimpse of watching her Glastonbury performance.

That blue hue on the screens also momentarily left during “What Was That,” with the screens becoming clearer, allowing me to come out of my dream-like state and letting reality set in for a moment.

Photo By @okaynicolita

Following the excitement of "What Was That" was "Broken Glass," where Lorde threw herself into the music, adding to the emotional intensity that I felt was filling the room.

Before moving to her next song, "Perfect Places," she checks in with the crowd. We all respond with ecstatic cheers. It seems the magic of seeing Lorde live had erased the complaints about crowd etiquette from not even fifteen minutes earlier. The lyrics "But when we're dancing, I'm alright" were a bit on the nose here.

Here is when I noticed there were contemporary dancers. Lorde joins them, pouring herself into the movements. Despite all her jumping and thrashing, her voice is unshaken. The dancers are just as in sync with the performance, jerking their bodies perfectly on beat to the music. There was that push and pull in their movements, with flowing movements contrasted by rigid ones.

Lorde opened her next song, "Shapeshifter," on all fours. A screen from a camera below her appears on the stage, revealing blue glitter on her hands, as she throws her body back and forth in what felt like a cathartic release. I have not heard this song before, but the lyrics "Visions of teenage innocence" hit close to home, as Lorde's music filled me with nostalgia for many versions of myself I remembered along the prior tracks. This only grew with the next song in her setlist, "Buzzcut Season," bringing me back to another time. The stage was filled with red lights as she sang, "I remember when your head caught flame." I have not listened to this song in a while and felt emotionally charged given its relevance. Any Lorde fans who haven't listened to her music in a while, I encourage you to revisit the lyrics of this one, especially if you are Gen Z, as they now take on new meaning beyond reminding us of a different time. The whole crowd sang along with "And I'll never go home again." Blank stares filled the faces of the dancers, reflecting the disillusionment that comes with really hearing the lyrics of the song as an adult for the first time.

Next was another song I hadn't heard before, "Favourite Daughter." Though the dancers were remarkable throughout, this is where I felt they started to increasingly blend into Lorde's performance in a way that was indispensable to the show experience.

Contrasting both the previous track and the song's painful lyrics was upbeat music. Lorde sang in an almost wailing way, and the dancers were displayed on the screen banging an unknown object. The emotional push and pull I felt was given a physical representation, as two dancers grabbed onto each other, doing a push-and-pull motion.

Lorde acknowledges the scorching weather that took place that day, nodding to her next song, "The Louvre," as she talks about summer romance. The show's style changed a bit here. I had just finished making a note about how the production, though detailed, was honestly simple and well executed, when Lorde started getting literally lifted into the air on a giant box with an electronic screen. The crowd sang harmoniously to lyrics of summer love. This felt like a moment of light, accompanied by actual flashing lights that lit up the performance space.

Though I intended to write only about the highlights, the performance itself was essentially an hour and a half of highlights. Realizing I could probably talk about this show forever, I've decided the remainder of this piece will not become a track-by-track breakdown of the setlist — which, admittedly, was never the intention, despite the fact that we're somehow 4 pages in already. 

     Photo By Anna Downs

Moving into "Hard Feelings," the vulnerability increased, with Lorde appearing again very close to the cameras that display onto the Gov Ball screens while embracing the dancers as she sang the lyrics, "'Til I'm so far away from you, far away from you, yeah." It is needless to say that it is a challenge to make a performance feel personal to a crowd of thousands of people at one of the biggest festivals in America, yet she did.

Just when I thought it could not get more personal, I was again surprised as she followed this moving performance with "Oceanic Feeling." As she sang about water, what I believe was a drinking water fountain appeared on the screen display, zoomed in on Lorde watching the stream and running her hands through it in a mesmerizing moment. This was my first time hearing this song, so hearing the lyrics, "In the future, if I have a daughter, will she have my waist or my widow's peak? My dreamer's disposition or my wicked streak?" was a punch in the gut (in the best way possible).

She slows her dancing as she sings, "I just had to breathe." Lorde's intentional choreography and staging choices beg the question of deeper meaning behind juxtapositions like holding a dancer as she sings, "So far away from you," during "Hard Feelings."

Following "Oceanic Feeling," she checks on a possible situation of someone needing help in the crowd and tells us how this is the most nervous she has been for a show in a while, "partly because we have never done this show before, and partly because I am obsessed with you."

She refers to the last time she was at Gov Ball around the release of Melodrama, asking, "Don't you feel like so much has changed in the last nine years?"

"There is also so much that fucks me up. There is a loss of dignity that I feel there is. Our world feels increasingly unjust, and it feels harder and harder to arrive at your own definitions of beauty and the truth and what is real. But uh, I really feel that this is real."

"If I may impart something that I have learned along the way, to combat all this, all of these fucked up forces in our world, I would say, show yourself…"

"It's good to be vulnerable, you know. Let it out. Let it hang."

That night, she led by example.

Here came the biggest gut punch of the night. Following her speech on beauty standards, she sings "Liability" while standing the most still yet. Videos of Lorde's younger self displayed on her body. Aside from how moving the song itself is, I believe this struck me most given I had come into this thinking about younger me, how she would feel about me being at this show and getting to write about it. I thought of all the painful parts of girlhood and thought of her intensely as she sang, "The truth is I am a toy that people enjoy." I hoped to tell her things would be okay and realized I still carried her with me, just as Lorde displayed her younger self on her waist. Everyone waved their cellphone flashlights slowly in the air, though I admit I didn't join them in my awestruck state. Stuck in my head still days after the performance is “I do my best to meet her demands.”

Returning back to this throughline of emotional push and pull, she goes from this moment of almost melancholy reflection to upbeat electronic sounds as she sings "Hammer," standing on a box as she sings the iconic lyrics, "Some days I'm a woman, some days I'm a man." Both her dancing and ours picked up again. It was as if the crowd had been compressed from the weight of that performance, and it had finally been released. 

Next was "Supercut." I wish I had more notes, but I had to dance, so take the absence as a sign that the show was good and both arms were needed. 

Lorde jumped right into “Teams.” She dances holding the dancers, as they become central to the performance again. Her voice is an absolute force from this track, and the crowd reflected that energy right back.

This longtime fan favorite was followed by her putting on a jacket that shot red lasers as she sang "Man of the Year," which was immediately followed with Charli xcx's "girl, so confusing featuring lorde" emphasizing the themes of fluidity her lyrics have been alluding to. The moment Lorde sang the word "girl," the crowd erupted with shocking intensity. The immediate transition from "Man of the Year" to "girl, so confusing" draws on this push and pull, further illustrating the storytelling nature of the setlist. Even the order of songs felt like an intimate exploration of Lorde's mind and identity.

Few artists can sing about some of the most heart-wrenching and relatable aspects of girlhood while somehow getting us all to dance to it.

Towards the end of the night, Lorde finally performed the long-awaited "Green Light" (the song behind the title's dad joke). It was everything I had hoped for and more. There was not a moment of quiet or stillness around me, simply a sea of moving bodies and screams, which somehow made the music better. Even in my recordings, I can't help but smile, though this is something that would typically be irritating.

Lorde closed the show with the song I waited most for, "Ribs." She asked the crowd to give her everything, so we did.

I FaceTimed a close childhood friend and threw my hands in the air for the remainder of the performance, hoping she could still see through the shaking screen. I could not help but look at her for a moment as Lorde sang, "You're the only friend I need" and "laughing 'til our ribs get tough." Then, of course, the moment demanded my attention again.

After that emotional rollercoaster and life-changing experience, Lorde left us with the most touching message yet: "Let's go Knicks!"