Lorde Returns to Victoria Park Seven Years Later, Calling All Points East’s Roster “Literally the Best Line-Up I’ve Ever Been Part Of”
Traveloasisspot.com – Seven years after she first stepped onto the Victoria Park stage as a supporting act at the inaugural All Points East festival in 2018, New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde — born Ella Yelich-O’Connor, now 29 — closed the London event as headline artist and delivered what she described as an emotionally overwhelming night. The performance marked a full-circle moment for both the musician and the festival, which has grown from a single-day showcase into one of the capital’s most anticipated summer music weekends.
Clad in an all-black waterproof ensemble suited to the English summer weather, Lorde opened her set with “Royals,” the 2013 single that launched her career and topped the UK singles chart. The choice was deliberate: a reminder of where she stood when she first played this very venue as a teenager, before pivoting into material from her most recent record, Virgin (2025), including its lead single “What Was That.”
A Personal Moment in the Middle of the Set
Halfway through the performance, Lorde paused to address the crowd directly, visibly moved by what she had witnessed across the festival’s stages that day.
“I think this is literally the best line-up I’ve ever been part of. It’s crazy, I went around this afternoon and watched people and I was really struck by what this group of artists are doing. This group of artists that you’ve seen today, have been trying to imagine a new world, it’s like I’ve been trying to find new ways to live, new ways to see, I really felt that.”
The remark landed in a festival context where artists such as PinkPantheress, Zara Larsson, and Oklou had performed earlier in the day, each contributing distinct textures to a programme that Lorde framed as a collective act of creative reimagining rather than a conventional bill of headliners and openers.
Memory, Crushes, and the Victoria Park Connection
Elsewhere in the evening, the singer recalled arriving at the park years ago alongside someone she had a crush on, describing the experience as “almost agony.” She then added, with a grin directed at the audience, “and it didn’t stop, he’s here tonight,” confirming the object of her adolescent infatuation was still in the crowd.
The set wove together visual and participatory elements throughout. During “Liability,” archival footage from her early career was projected directly onto her shirt, collapsing the distance between performer and spectator. For “David,” a banner reading “I don’t belong to anyone 2013” was distributed into the audience, turning the crowd into a living lyric sheet and reinforcing the song’s themes of autonomy and self-ownership.
The closer was perhaps the most intimate moment of the night. Lorde stepped onto a small platform positioned in the middle of the VIP section of the crowd and performed “Ribs,” one of her earliest compositions, while fans jumped and sang along in close proximity. The choice of song — raw, tender, and years older than her mainstream catalogue — underscored the personal stakes of returning to a venue that had witnessed her transition from unknown teenager to global headliner.
Virgin and the Long Gap Between Albums
Virgin, released in June 2024, represented Lorde’s first studio album in nearly four years and her fourth full-length record overall. Its arrival was announced with a surprise secret set at Glastonbury Festival, where she performed the album in its entirety to a festival crowd — a move that generated significant pre-release buzz and positioned the record as an event before its official drop.
The album slots into a discography that has consistently charted at the top of the UK albums chart. Her prior releases — Pure Heroine (2013), Melodrama (2017), and Solar Power (2021) — each reached the top ten, establishing a pattern of sustained commercial and critical relevance across more than a decade. Tracks such as “Green Light,” “Solar Power,” and the aforementioned “Royals” remain fixtures of streaming playlists and radio rotation, anchoring her catalogue in both contemporary and retrospective listening.
What the Victoria Park Return Signals
For All Points East, booking Lorde as a closing headliner after seven years functions as both a celebration of the festival’s own growth and a statement about the artist’s trajectory. The event, which began in 2018 as a single-day showcase in Victoria Park, has expanded into a multi-day programme spanning multiple stages and genres. Lorde’s presence at both its genesis and its current scale makes her a living thread through the festival’s institutional history.
Her remarks about the artists sharing the bill that day — framing their collective output as an attempt to “imagine a new world” — also reflect a broader shift in how festival programming is discussed. Rather than ranking acts by ticket-selling power, the language of shared creative ambition has become a recurring motif in how artists describe collaborative stages, suggesting that the festival format itself is being reinterpreted as a collaborative laboratory rather than a competitive ladder.
As the final notes of “Ribs” faded over the VIP section and the crowd dispersed into the London night, the seven-year arc from supporting act to headliner closed with an image of mutual recognition: the artist and the audience, both changed, both present, both choosing to stay.
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