When You Go In Blind: Lorde Kicks off her Tour in Austin, Texas

Fortune-cookie sized paper from Lorde's kickoff performance at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas on Sept. 19, 2025

There’s something special about going to a show with no previews from social media —  no set-lists to satisfy curiosity or beautiful fomo inspiring photos. And that’s what all the Austin Moody Center buzz was about. Lorde began the Ultrasound tour in Austin, Texas Wednesday night, her first time doing so. Friends speculated what she’ll sing first or if she’ll sing their favorite tune. Will she sing a track from Melodrama? Solar Power? How about Pure Heroine? Most definitely Virgin.

“The mission of my life is to reveal more to you…Peeling off one layer at a time. That’s what I’m trying to do,” Ella Marija Lani Yelish-O’Connor shares halfway through her performance.

With her X-Ray revealing an IUD as the album cover, how can the New Zealand artist reveal even more?

Little is left for surprise in our social media age. Performers attempt to control the pacing of storytelling, but hype, clout and clicks burn away the stage curtain.

There were actually no curtains in this show (this is the last of the show spoilers).

When you go in blind, performance art feels like a cultural wave. You are at the zeitgeist’s summit.  There is something larger than the sum of our parts in the 15,000 seat arena. An elephant in the room that can’t be seen, but has been felt since our time six feet apart.

The effects of social-distancing still linger. A distance normalized where technology has pushed us further than six feet. Lorde shows music and performance is part of the solution.

Her magic spurred a dance between surprise and confusion in the pit and birthed a nostalgic dance floor. But this was real and right now, no more looking back with rose-colored glasses.

And of the future. What do we all see if we dream of the future?

“We need tools now. And we’ve probably already made it,” Lorde tells Zane Lowe. “Let’s focus on the right now.”