Norwegian popstar AURORA’s unending love for her audience was uplifting from start to finish on a heart-warming night in Leeds, even if her staging and set list left something to be desired.
“Ican already tell this is going to be one of those shows that makes me face hurt,” giggled lovably humble songstress Aurora Aksnes in front of her Leeds crowd, having bounced her way through the first few songs of the night. She was far from the only one in the room that would need to give themselves a face massage from all the smiling that the night would entail. Instantly, Aurora’s heartfelt connection to the crowd was apparent as she labelled us her “Leeds warriors” and appeared genuinely shocked as she cracked on with opener Heathens, as if she’d half expected to walk out onto stage and see no one at all.
No, the sell-out crowd confirmed, Aurora remains more popular than ever. Even my dad joined me for this one – his first concert in decades – and we were both surprised by the age diversity of the concert goers as we trudged towards the back of a queue that seemed to snake all the way back to the car park. A large part of that audience was likely to have been inspired to buy their tickets largely to see a single song – myself included. The nuanced folktronica of Runaway was a monumental moment in Aurora’s career, gaining sleeper hit status in 2021 when it found the favour of many millions of teens on TikTok, thus launching the Norwegian singer well and truly into the mainstream. The shimmering, nostalgic piece found a good match in last summer’s endless black and white clips of friends dancing in the rain or watching a particularly beautiful sunset, often paired with a caption that recalled pre-Covid days before the bliss of youth had been taken away from us. The promise of Runaway – and the dazzling display of golden light that I imagined would be paired with the soaring choruses – was easily enough to propell me into the Academy in search of goosebumps.
It was frankly a reckless decision, then, for Aurora to place Runaway in the inconspicuous slot of track three for the night. Her recent album was strong, yes, but it would surely take more spectacular material to rightly oust the closing slot that Runaway so deserved. On the other hand, Aurora may just be one of many artists that has quietly grown a distaste for her biggest smash. Indeed, telling the crowd “this one’s for you,” before starting the verse may have hinted that Runaway was only included at all to appease the hit-hungry fans.
Instead, emphasis was placed on post-Runaway tracks, and luckily Aurora has a good selection of material to pull from. The Seed was an early success, gritty and menacing with its pounding bass and Aurora delivering the line “you cannot eat money” in the style of a tribal chant. The message is nothing ground-breaking, but the empassioned performance nonetheless made The Seed‘s message of climate-sceptic greed one of the most impactful moments of the night. Earthy Blood in the Wine carried similar weight earlier in the tracklist, even if the song does flirt dangerously with Spaghetti Western clichés. Warrior was another early fan favourite, with the audience responding to Aurora’s empassioned performance with thousands of fists raised in time with the music.
Aurora’s numerous acoustic ballads were clumped rather clumsily in the middle of the set, resulting in a very significant drop in energy for a long 30 minutes. Blink-and-you’ll-miss-them mid-tempo ballads like Exhale Inhale and A Little Place Called the Moon formed the night’s musical nadir, and even listenable Exist For Love got sucked into the black hole of dullness. When bubbly dancepop number Cure For Me eventually kicked into gear, the overwhelming feeling was of relief that the show seemed to be back on track.
It wasn’t just relief that made Cure For Me so electrifying witness – the song is unbelievably catchy, with a slightly silly chorus hook that would be the talk of any Eurovision season (Norway, there’s surely still time to switch…). Aurora relished in the song’s playfulness, flicking her hair from side to side and leaping from one corner of the stage to the other as flashes of bright green and red dazzled from the lights behind her. Momentum was maintained with dancey The Innocent and 80s-tinged hit single A Temporary High, which elicted the strongest reaction from the audience all night.
It must be said that the staging – mostly consisting of a large circle propped up behind Aurora – could have been better. It was at its best when projecting Aurora’s shadow for the night’s calmer moments, highlighting her immaculate armography in the process. Most of the time, however, the circle was an occasionally-flickering variety of solid colours that begged the question why a huge circle was even necessary in the first place. Minimalism is all well and good, but simple props require just as much purpose as the intricate ones. Instead, Aurora’s surroundings felt uncharacterically half-hearted.
Nonetheless, the crowd demanded an encore, although using up brilliant crowd-pleasers like Queendom and Running With the Wolves before scuttling backstage undoubtedly made the chants of “one more song!” more restrained than they could have been. A long preamble made largely-unfamiliar 2016 track Through The Eyes Of A Child inevitably anticlimactic, and there was no special lighting that the performance so desperately needed in order to highlight the beauty of the moment. A simple spotlight on a slowly rotating glitterball would have surely done the trick. Giving In To The Love was a similarly questionable choice to finish the night, but the run-of-the-mill electropop track was sold well with some vigorous hand-waving on Aurora’s part.
The second half of the main set may have had too many good songs to mention, but the true highlights of the night came between songs. For the whole show, the artist seemed infatuated by her audience, inspired by the crowd’s willingness to dance freely and to some extent open their hearts to her in return for her music. “I don’t want to leave!” she giggled during the encore, rambling her way towards her penultimate track with childlike giddiness. Other times she was more of a sage-like mother figure. “Never forget,” she assured us at one point, “you are so much better than the person that hurt you.” It felt almost as if Aurora had sat down with each and every one of us and listened to all our personal problems like a loving friend before offering her kindest, purest words of wisdom. If Aurora’s aim was to leave each concert-goer with a lasting smile and a warm glow inside, she succeeded effortlessly.