Famous People #12: Perfect Places dance party at Barclays Center
Kaitlyn: First of all, Lorde is obsessed with gore and violence, which is how you know she is actually from a shit suburb and not just posing for effect.
“We’ll end up painted on the road” is something you say only if everyone you grew up with has mild brain damage from space heater fumes, or putting weird stuff in fires. When city kids sing along to lyrics about drunk driving I become physically furious. It’s my cross to bear but also they should stop! Anyway, at the Barclays Center, on a Wednesday night, Lorde put up a short slideshow regarding “The Mysteries of the Blood” and “An Army of Children.” Lizzie remarked that we might be experiencing a cult induction and I thought, “Thank god.”
Lizzie: I’m gonna assume there weren’t too many “city kids” at the Barclays Center Lorde concert last week. All the attendees were dressed up in their Wednesday night best, meaning black skirts from American Apparel’s 2013 collection, pin-straight hair, and maybe a jumpsuit or two.
I arrived in time to see the last song of Run the Jewels’ set, and Kaitlyn got there a few minutes later.
Kaitlyn: What happened during the Lorde concert? Interesting question. What didn’t? I paid $15 for a whiskey-coke, and a stick of dynamite tumbled down each of my shins. I looked around and thought “I respect everyone here.”
I thought, “I respect my every thought. I respect every boy who’s kissed me more than once. I respect every woman who’s told me to get into or not get into paying for Tinder Gold, and every woman with whom I’ve shared some jokes at the expense of women’s clubs. It’s all big news to me.” I was like, amazed by the outfits.
Then I saw Jack Antonoff walking into a row of seats just in front of us, accompanied by his girlfriend, St. Vincent butt model Carlotta Kohl. He sat down in his seat during all of “Perfect Places” and I became impossible to control. I twisted off my left pinky nail and then my right. During “Supercut,” his dad peeled a ten-dollar bill out of a leather wallet and Jack wandered off with it, to buy a water bottle. I bit off a chunk of my own shoulder and Lizzie and I were forced to remember the last time we had seen a famous man at a concert — New York Times music critic Jon Caramanica, at an outdoor Kacey Musgraves and Conor Oberst show in 2016, at which time friend-of-the-newsletter Claire @clocarus insisted we “tap dance for Jon Caramanica and get discovered.” The memory did not calm me down.
Lizzie: If I remember correctly, Jon Caramanica also brought a date to the Kacey Musgraves show, and he did not dance. He didn’t move much at all. Jack Antonoff did sit down for “Perfect Places,” but in fairness he had just returned from the Barclays Center centerstage where he performed an intimate cover of St. Vincent’s “New York” with Lorde. “New York” might remind Antonoff of his new model girlfriend’s butt, but it definitely reminds Lorde of how much she wants to see Jack Antonoff naked.
They were sitting together on the edge of the stage, with the flyaways in their hair touching. It was like watching a photoshoot for a picture frame company. Boy with guitar, girl smirking, heads down. When Jack tried to stand up to leave the stage, Lorde basically pulled him back down by the penis, like it was the rope on a tugboat.
Kaitlyn: This might be hard for you to believe, but on Tuesday night, in a fancy pizza place in Greenpoint where two teenagers-in-love were so invested in each other’s bodies that it looked for a moment as if the girl was going to snap the boy’s neck just to get closer to his bones, I was asked by my dinner companion, “What song do you think is Lorde going to cover tomorrow?” I said, without taking the rim of a glass of Malbec out of my mouth, “Um, ‘New York’ by St. Vincent!!!!!!”
Lorde, of course, tweeted “you’re the only motherfucker in the city who can handle me” on July 26th, 2017. Then she sang “New York” by St. Vincent at the Barclays Center on April 4th, 2018. She did this for me and for Lizzie because she knew that we needed to hear a classic tale of friendship and First Avenue, and because she knew that I really, really wanted to be right.
Lizzie: Kaitlyn was right. I wish it had earned us some money, or maybe a night out with Carlotta Kohl.
After that, Lorde asked Jack if he wanted to sit silently next to her while she played her next song, but he said “I’d rather play it.” Then he rushed to the back of the stage, where he stood behind a curtain and played the keyboard.
Kaitlyn: This has all been covered on New York Magazine’s The Cut! However, they did not ask us for our intel about Jack’s dad’s wallet. Lorde sang “Writer in the Dark,” which, if you recall, was hotly debated on Twitter amongst media personalities who thought they might demonstrate that they are “not basic” by disrespecting it. The debate was ended by friend-of-the-newsletter Claire @clocarus who remarked “this song is gorgeous & lorde knows what she’s doing.”
Before performing it, Lorde told a short anecdote about her friends, who allegedly asked her if she “felt bad” about mining her former romantic relationship for art. “Fuck that,” she snapped. Um! My heart went out to her — literally it hurtled across the 100-or-so feet between me and Lizzie and Lorde and never came back to my chest.
Lizzie: It was a very dramatic night for Kaitlyn, whose body, as you have probably realized by now, was bloodied, charred, and stretched out like a wad of chewing gum by the time the night was over.
Kaitlyn: The background dancers did choreography somewhere between ballet and body horror, and the boy next to me took off his snapback and held it to his chest out of respect. I swooned, not for him, but for all of us. Lorde said “This song is about a pawrty.” I looked at Lizzie and said “pawrty” just as Lizzie looked at me and said “pawrty.”
I had a hard time not thinking about the part in I Love Dick where Chris Kraus says “Emotion’s just so terrifying, the world refuses to believe it can be pursued as discipline, as form.” Four days or years later it was Sunday morning and I was still thinking about it, so I dug my knuckles into a kitchen table and tried to speak in a tone of voice that could freeze a boy’s veins. I have heard so many men call the Lorde album “good,” and hardly any call it an unprecedented event in which a young genius manipulated the entire pop music machine to communicate a collection of feelings and truths more specific and more interesting than anything it has been used for in the past or will be used for in the future. Honestly, whatever.
Lizzie: There was a lot to take in. Curly-haired producers, models, New Zealand accents, an Off-White ballerina dress, sneakers thrown into the crowd, Kaitlyn’s gum body, dancing, no dancing, a new song during the encore, and Jack Antonoff’s dad’s money.
Kaitlyn: I hope Lizzie had a complicated emotional experience, or at least fun.
Lizzie: I had fun!
PARTY REVIEW METRICS:
Did anyone bring a dog?
Kaitlyn: Dogs have nothing to worry about and therefore don’t need to experience catharsis or elation in a crowd.
Did anyone get engaged?
Kaitlyn: Halfway through the show, Lorde whispered “Does anyone have a crush?” Everyone in the Barclays Center nearly fainted, except — no offense — SOME BITCH, who waved her ring finger in the air until Lorde said “Oh, she has a ring.” Absolutely not an answer to what was asked, and I can’t imagine the interior life of a person who would hear Lorde pose a simple question and respond by sharing totally irrelevant information.
Lizzie: I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be Scheana.
Did we hear any good secrets?
Kaitlyn: Uh, hello. We heard “She thinks you love the beach, you’re such a damn liar.” We heard “slow like pseudoephedrine.” We heard that Lorde eats bodega sushi, from her rude friend Jack Antonoff. We saw the boy next to us experience his first feelings in his life.
Lizzie: Hey, that boy next to us seemed like a steamroller of constant uncontainable emotions, so I think we should be fair to him!
Did anyone get famous?
Kaitlyn: Jack Antonoff got famous, among those seated in Section 8 of the Barclays Center, after at least 30 minutes of no one realizing who he was except Kaitlyn and Lizzie.
PARTY SCORE:
Kaitlyn: What the fuck.
Lizzie: Pretty good!