Lorde’s Final Performance of 2017 Was a Thing of Beauty

Every ending marks a new beginning. It's late November, and Melbourne has the privilege of seeing Lorde's last show of a turbulent 2017.

When "Royals" made her a household name in 2013, Ella Yelich-O'Connor – just 16 – seemed an impossibly precocious teenager. Every generation builds on the progress of the past, and Lorde, a product of classic literature and the modern internet, seemed to have accelerated past the wisdom of most adults. She was unusually obsessed with age and adulthood; some joked about her secretly being a middle-aged woman. Teenagers can't wait to get older, but everyone else wishes they were young. Lorde wasn't too big for her britches – perhaps she was too big for ours. Lorde's 2014 Pure Heroine tour showed enormous potential. With just one album, an EP, and a few covers to her name, she was already a bewitching live performer. But her approach was too minimalist – an energetic live drummer couldn't make up for a blank stage and a sterile keyboardist, playing the songs too precisely as they were recorded. Pure Heroine's songs were about isolation, being a teenager in secluded New Zealand. Were they were meant to be heard alone, too?

With second albums come second chances, though Melbourne's outdoor Sidney Myer Music Bowl feels more ominous than usual. It threatens to rain – or storm – all night, but it never comes. Clad in future workout gear, the Australian-via-London George Maple proves a worthy opener. She’s a few years older, but if Lorde opened the doors for Antipodean women in pop, the next generation are starting to come through. Lorde opens with two of her most joyful, empowering songs – Melodrama's "Homemade Dynamite", and the Disclosure collaboration "Magnets". But even at her most straightforward, these are songs about unconventional desires – connecting with the flawed, abnormal aspects of other people. Her voice sounds bigger than it ever has on record, and with a second keyboard player/guitarist, her musicians finally feel like a unified band. Dancers weave their way through the stage. At times, they move as if they're an extension of Lorde's limbs; other times, they contort chaotically around her, the calm within the storm. Melodrama is such a creative leap that relistening to Pure Heroine now, the 16-year-old Lorde's perspective can seem uncomfortably naïve. We all look back on our own teen years the same way, embarrassed by our own candour. But in the present, she sings Pure Heroine's songs from a place of experience over innocence.

"Tennis Court" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Pretty soon, I'll be getting on my first plane", she wrote in early 2013. These days she sings it with a knowing smile, arms spread wide. But the original feeling, the sense memory, comes flooding back with every performance. "Royals"'s cultural phenomenon feels like it could have been a decade ago; the fantasy she sings about is our status quo.

Time is an emotion; the passage of time creates loss, distance from yourself and your surroundings. Living isn't a neutral act – change happens whether or not you want it to. You lose touch with friends, the people you love – not always through malice, just cold, apathetic circumstance. On Pure Heroine, Lorde was restless. "We're never done with killing time / Can I kill it with you?"

Introducing "Ribs", Lorde says, "I wrote this song when I was 16… I was terrified of growing up. Five years later, I think it's gonna be okay." As the song starts, her smile twists into a tense expression. But as 12,000 people sing "I've never felt more alone", the song's anxiety turns to joy. The irony of that line forms a new truth: we're reliving being alone together. Same goes for "Team", where for years, Lorde sang "I'm kinda over being told to throw my hands up in the air" – and inevitably, part of the crowd just had to do it. This time she raises her hands too, then balls them into fists.

Pure Heroine was about growing up, learning from external experiences and relationships to mature as a person. But Melodrama is the reverse – it's about having internal epiphanies, then living them for real.

"Liability" is the loneliest song Lorde's ever written – and it's the biggest singalong of the night. Our loneliness, our own lost friends and lovers, makes right now all the more powerful. "Supercut", too, is about regrets – it's Melodrama's most heartbreaking moment, where Lorde realises she's misremembering the breakdown of her last relationship. "In my head I do everything right", she sings, cursing her idealism – and the fiction of her songwriting. But surrounded by kindred spirits, the song seems less fatalist. We can break the cycle together – learn from old traumas to create new memories.

The studio versions of Melodrama's songs aren’t quite complete. The emotional arc Lorde goes through on the album – from loneliness to learning to live with yourself – isn't fulfilled until you see her live, fully embodying that change. And there can be no melodrama without an audience; the crowd atmosphere recreates the bustling New York where she wrote these songs. Melodrama is full of empty spaces, but unlike Pure Heroine, they're waiting to be filled with our collective catharsis. It's foolish to assume there's a true universal experience for everyone, but Lorde narrates hers as vividly as if it were our own. The show's precisely rehearsed – her 30th this year – but feels completely in the moment. She's the perfect balance of ego and humility; pop theatricality and singer-songwriter confession. She does far more with subtle movements and inflections than other popstars do with smoke and mirrors. She trusts our euphoria to carry all the way to the back row. All performances are a form of manipulation, but Lorde's are like being confronted with an overwhelming sense of emotional clarity. It's too much to handle alone; why not endure it together? "Perfect Places" ends Melodrama with another irony: "What the fuck are perfect places anyway?" The utopias in our minds don't exist, except maybe in a perfect three-minute pop song, which isn't a place – it's a time. It's fleeting, but perhaps all the more beautiful for it. Lorde brings to life her teenage past, our present, and our limitless future with a grace few have ever managed. You feel like you can see your life flashing ahead of you. "Loveless", the brief coda to "Hard Feelings", is a curious choice of encore. In the studio, Lorde's backing vocals are often spooky, disembodied – the sound of her own mind. "L-O-V-E-L-E-S-S", she sings, but 12,000 people sing the response back at her: "Generation!" Who needs romance, anyway? Are we that lonely after all?

Richard S. He is a pop producer and critic. You can tweet your grievances to @Richaod.