On Sept. 24, 2025, the Ultrasound Tour made its way to Toronto at Scotiabank Arena. Accompanied with openers like dream-pop artist Chanel Beads and indie-pop band The Japanese House, Lorde invited the audience to celebrate the release of her latest record, Virgin, and spend a night inside her wild and fluorescent mind.
Through the blaring intro of “Hammer”, Lorde rose out of the stage in a fluid manner and wearing a particularly plain outfit: white t-shirt, loosely fitted men’s jeans, and a silver chain across her neck, most of which is taken off by the end of the show to honour Virgin’s minimalist production style.
The act of taking clothes off and even exchanging shirts for a piece of tape across the chest during “Man Of The Year” is a visual representation of Lorde’s relationship to her ever-evolving gender identity; furthermore, it tears down the barrier between the artist and the fans.Â
In a sense, Ultrasound Tour has taken the fan’s listening experience and brought it straight to the stage! Lorde takes her audience through a visual representation of the emotions evoked by each song, as she runs on a treadmill during “Supercut” or simply jumps around to “No Better”. These deceivingly simple experiences take listeners back to where it all started, and in that moment, make a room of 20,000 people feel like another bedroom dance party for one. It’s hard to believe the singer ever disappeared for four years, shrouding herself in mystery, only to return and express her rawest feelings yet.
The camera work itself becomes an interactive feat during the show, as the dancers take control of a camcorder and begin recording Lorde manually during songs like “GRWM”, where she exposes her belly button to the camera and keeps it there for the duration of the track.
Despite mixed reactions to it, Lorde laughs it off and tells fans, “sometimes you just need to mess around.” Her movements throughout the show remained relaxed and refreshingly unchoreographed, imitating the dancing done when no one’s watching, leaving many fans in the arena to follow suit.Â
For her penultimate song, “David”, Lorde is adorned in a jacket made of light panels and makes her way into the crowd for a cathartic last hurrah among the attendees. Those who were lucky enough to find themselves on the floor of Ultrasound Tour were able to see the artist sing and make her way through the crowd to a B-stage, where the closing song “Ribs” would take place.
In most cases where there is fan and performer interaction, the audience is heavily warned about fan etiquette, specifically not to make excessive contact. Lorde, however, warmly invited members to get close to her, even fending off security guards pulling fans away from the secondary stage (which lacked any form of barricade). There were no more levels of separation between fans and herself while performing, almost as if Lorde was making herself an equal to everyone else in the room, forming a deeper bond with the people who have connected to her and her projects over the years.Â
As the Ultrasound Tour in Toronto came to an end, Lorde made her way back into the mysterious vacuum behind the stage, and the arena lit up, revealing thousands of emotionally distraught fans walking out to “All My Friends” by LCD Soundsystem (an equally appropriate and devastating song choice for a moment like this).Â
Lorde never planned on playing arenas ever again, as stated in a voice memo to fans sent before the tour started. This is due to her Melodrama tour selling poorly, leaving venues feeling half-full and ultimately disappointing, given the album’s strong initial reception.
“People don’t think about the fact that the person on stage, whose name is on the banner, is looking at someone walking out, or some seats not being full. It’s so vulnerable,” she says on popular podcast Therapuss with Jake Shane. This twist of luck during the Melodrama Tour ultimately led to Lorde touring her third album, Solar Power, in smaller-capacity venues. However, by playing a sold-out show at Scotiabank Arena, the artist has proved she is still capable of major mainstream success and able to speak to fans now more than ever.Â
In an era of beautifully crafted concerts, from the stage set to the artist’s custom designer garments, Lorde’s stripped and antithetical Ultrasound Tour contrasts greatly from the myriad of other touring artists in today’s music scene, who insist on showing their audience how high they can jump or how many gems fit on their show costumes. Her dedication to remaining barebones and authentic has cemented Lorde as one of this generation’s most formative artists.