my L O R D E concert experience.

The first time I heard Lorde's inexplicably gorgeous Melodrama (her sophomore album), I was in a hotel room in San Jose, Ecuador. I blared it between 2 & 3 A.M. That time of night radiates an eery sort of feeling, where your nerves are hollow and everything is devoid of color and replaced with a thrilling sort of haze. I collapsed on my white bed and willed myself to listen to the album, knowing that my favorite female artist couldn't possibly top her previous GLORIOUS tour-de-force, Pure Heroine.

I was wrong.

Melodrama is pure youthfulness, or pure young adulthood, bottled up & poured into heartwrenching lyrics and soaring instrumentation. I had never heard anything quite like it before. She completely encapsulated the paradox, the bitterness, the sharp pain and love that comes along as a package deal as you become a young adult. It reminded me of the song versions of many of my favorite painters; post impressionistic and baroque themes were quite present within each song, and I was absolutely dumbfounded.

So, naturally, I knew I'd sell my soul to see this album live. From the minute I heard Supercut, the first song I listened to off of the full album (& my favorite), I knew I'd pay any amount of money to experience that masterpiece at a concert.

On April 14th, I drove to Duluth with one of my best friends, listening to the entirety of Pure Heroine and Melodrama to my dad's utter dismay (he claims that Lorde is way too angsty, as if there IS such a thing.) The thing that strikes me the most about Melodrama? I still felt as though I was in my hotel room, listening to Sober and Writer In The Dark and The Louvre for the first time. Her songs are so powerful that the magic of hearing them never really wears off. They struck with insane emotional resonance last June, and they speak to me even more so in April.

When buying my tickets, I bought them in a mad dash without looking at the location of actual seats. I was mostly looking for a certain price, and had saved up my own money for months. I quickly bought the tickets, and TWO DAYS BEFORE THE CONCERT, I realized I had bought tickets for Row A.

This didn't really even register to me until I was given a VIP wristband and ushered to the front of the stadium with Brooke. We keep looking at each other, wide-eyed, and screaming "Is this actually happening???????"

That night was just everything I've ever dreamed of since hearing the record. I was astounded when she sang her first note of Sober, the opening, because she somehow surpassed the RECORDED version of the song. Her vocals were raw and deep and beautiful, despite the fact that she danced shamelessly throughout the entire concert. She wasn't breathless and her vocals were a n g e l i c. By the third song, my feet were killing me and my voice was gone, but I was in a state of euphoria. Brooke and I were dancing like lightning, colors dashing and swirling around us. Confetti in our hair. Screaming the lyrics we'd screamed in the walls of our rooms so many times before.

Ella seemed to be the most lovely, humble person. She would stop between songs and thank us over and over again, telling us that she couldn't believe we wanted to spend our Saturday night with her.

I cried my eyes out during Writer In The Dark, Liability, and Green Light. Her speech before Writer In The Dark felt like it was tailor made for what I was experiencing at the time, and it was brilliant. Ella vulnerably opened up about being a writer, exclaiming that,

"Being a writer is a hard person to be and it's a hard person to love. I used to try to change for others, but then I thought, screw it. You just have to be who you're supposed to be. There is no other life for us. We have to be the vivid dreamers, the over-reacters, the hopeless romantics. We have to be the writers."

My entire life, I've always been boundlessly passionate. I've always been the girl who over-reacts, over-loves, over-steps, and over-does it. I've tried to water myself down for people, trying to hold back the floodgates of all of the people and things and places that I adore before they slip through my lips. Writing has helped me release all of the color that bubbles up inside my skull. I've wrote poetry since I was nine years old. Hearing my role model and favorite female artist encourage a stadium full of people that it's okay to be who you're supposed to be? It meant more than I can express.

My favorite songs played live were surprisingly not my favorite songs on Melodrama. I absolutely adored hearing Green Light, because the energy was just insane. I danced the hardest to that one, trying to extract all of the joy & pain & wonder & leave it behind in that stadium. Sober was also fantastically wild and a spectacle of glowing green and blue. I also adored seeing The Louvre live. It was so impossibly dreamy and the dancing completely matched the mood of the brilliant love song.

During the last song, Team, Ella ran into the audience. She ran across the stadium, stopping every now and then to take a selfie or to hug someone. When she got to my section, she grabbed my outstretched hand and sang a couple lines holding my hand. In that moment, I seemed to fill every Obsessed Indie Girl stereotype in all of the galaxies, but I was in literal shock. My favorite female artist was literally holding my hand. I have so much respect and awe for her as an artist, activist, and human being, and was truly humbled to be that close to her.

The intent of this article isn't to project some privilieged, braggy vibe at all. I write about experiences I want to remember forever, and this is surely one that I wish to keep inside my heart eternally. It goes down as one of the most ecstatic moments of teenagedom in all of my seventeen years of living. I am so grateful for artists who are vulnerable enough to write their hearts out. I am so grateful that God created E minor, and that I can press a button on my phone and be transported to another world. I am so so grateful for this experience, and hope to take my children to a Lorde concert one day. : )

Thank you, Ella.

XOXOX, Skylar Presley

MY FAVORITE LORDE SONGS OF ALL TIME:

1. Supercut

2. Writer In the Dark

3. Perfect Places

4. A World Alone

5. 400 Lux

6. Hard Feelings/Loveless

7. Liability

8. The Louvre

9. Homemade Dynamite

10. Sober 2