Lorde has staged a hometown comeback anything but ordinary.
On Wednesday night, the Kiwi superstar delivered a surprise pop-up performance in a bathroom at Auckland’s YMCA on Vincent Street. The intimate show followed a cryptic Instagram post earlier that day: a grainy photo of a cracked iPhone tucked into the waistband of a pair of jeans, tagged simply “Auckland.” The post linked to a WhatsApp chat where fans could message Lorde directly.
“Auckland I wanna play you something .. Meet me in the city tonight? Message me if you’re keen,” she wrote.
Fans quickly gathered in the CBD, with reports of more than 300 people lining the street outside the venue. According to the NZ Herald, organisers let groups of about 30 in every 15 minutes. Some fans, invite or not, stayed in the cold hoping for a glimpse of the star—or for a miracle wristband.
Inside, the experience was surreal. Lorde performed to small groups, reportedly from within a bathroom cubicle. “People will be let in, see her perform and ushered out the back,” Newstalk ZB reporter Jordan Dunn told the Herald. “Lots of people have shown up who may not have received an invite, hoping for the best or hoping she may come outside.”
— media (@entplus_) May 28, 2025
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The appearance marks another guerrilla-style moment in Lorde’s unconventional rollout for Virgin, her fourth studio album, due out June 27th. She’s already made headlines this month for crashing a “Lorde-themed” club night at Sydney’s Mary’s Underground, where she danced with fans and DJ’d her own tracks. Before that, a flash performance in New York’s Washington Square Park was cut short by police after the crowd grew beyond control.
It’s not the first time Lorde’s turned her hometown into a cryptic breadcrumb trail. In 2017, ahead of Melodrama, she tweeted a map of Auckland revealing mysterious clues—a smoking car in Ponsonby, green lights at Herne Bay beach, a projection downtown. This time, fans caught hints via WhatsApp and social media.
The Auckland pop-up comes ahead of her second single from Virgin, “Man of the Year”, which is set for release tomorrow. The track follows lead single “What Was That”, which has already topped Spotify’s US chart—her first number one there since “Royals” in 2012.
In her recent Rolling Stone cover story, Lorde opened up about writing “Man of the Year” during a period of intense emotional and physical change. She had recently stopped taking birth control and been diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder. As she sat on her living room floor, she tried to visualise a version of herself “fully representative of how [her] gender felt in that moment.”
What she saw was herself in men’s jeans, nothing else but a gold chain and duct tape over her chest. “The tape had this feeling of rawness to her, of it ‘not being a permanent solution’,” the article said.
While Lorde still uses she/her pronouns and identifies as a cis woman, she described herself as “in the middle gender-wise” and spoke of her resistance to boxing herself in. “I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man,” she told Rolling Stone.
Lorde has been spotted around Auckland in recent days, including a sighting at Ponsonby eatery Blue, where she posed with a pet chihuahua. On May 21st, she posted a moody reel of herself waist-deep in water off a local beach with Rangitoto in the background. The video was soundtracked by a snippet of “Man of the Year”, with the lyrics: “Let’s hear it for the man of the year.”
While her upcoming ‘Ultrasound World Tour’ includes stops across North America, the UK, and Europe, fans in Aotearoa were quick to notice its absence from the schedule. When called out in the comments, Lorde responded: “Cam awwwwwwn now lol. Just the beginning.”
If this week is anything to go by? She meant it.
