Lorde threatened with arrest for ‘riot incitement’
Source: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Singer Lorde has revealed anti-terrorism police in New York City threatened to arrest her earlier this year.
The 28-year-old singer had planned to film the music video for What Was That? in Washington Square Park.
But after she posted her plans on her Instagram Story, “such a mob showed up that the cops shut it down”, and Lorde received a stern warning from officers.
“We had the anti-terrorism unit being very intense, telling me if I stepped on the premises I would be arrested for riot incitement,” the Kiwi singer said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
The Royals hitmaker “couldn’t show up for many hours” but eventually returned to the park to shoot the video on a tight timeline.
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“I came back later, they said, ‘You can go out, you have one shot at it’,” she said.
“If people don’t maybe know this, we were launching my first song for this album, but we were also shooting the music video, which would come out 24 hours later.
“There was an edit that had to be gotten to very quickly.
“A lot of dominoes had to fall right for this to work. The NYPD was definitely a spanner.”
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Following Lorde’s revelation, police confirmed they intervened because she didn’t have the right permits to be in the park with her fans.
“On Tuesday, April 22, 2025, at approximately 1847 hours in the vicinity of Washington Square Park, in the confines of the 6th Precinct, officers were alerted of an unscheduled event inside of the park,” the New York Police Department told People magazine.
“A sound and parks permit is required to have a concert in a New York City Park. This individual did not possess either. Organisers of the event were informed they could not perform and they left the location.”
Also during the interview, Lorde hailed MDMA therapy a game-changer when it came to tackling her “horrific” stage fright.
“Some of these things live very deep in the body, and you hold on to it,” she said.
“You hold on to a response like stage fright for reasons that no amount of talk therapy or brain use could get at. But when you bypass that and get to the body, something shifts. And that totally happened for me.”
After having tried “everything” beforehand, Lorde was delighted to get immediate relief from her performance anxiety.
“I was like, oh, it’s over. I know it’s over,” she said.
