AURORA: “What Happened To The Earth?”
Fillmore
29 E Allen St.
Philadelphia
Dec. 9, 2024
AURORA is different. AURORA grew up isolated by nature in the mountains of Norway. AURORA is a musical prodigy. AURORA has a pet algae ball named Igor Septimus. AURORA’s parents worried she’d be bullied as a child because of her proclivity for wearing long skirts. AURORA turned out to be very popular. AURORA is a star.
That’s some of the lore I learned about Nordic singer-songwriter and global sensation AURORA during her paradoxically self-obsessed show, “What Happened To The Earth?” at Fillmore in Philly.
AURORA introduces her pet algae at a 2018 concert.
Though her music critiques the destructive nature of capitalism, AURORA’s all-caps brand of animalistic screaming and Scandinavian purity is predicated on impoverished identity politics. She sells a sense of mythology through her folkloric upbringing and aesthetic while cashing in on an Americanized spin on authenticity: The “indie girl voice.”
This epic article by Ace Linguist on the “indie girl voice,” which refers to the inexplicably off-kilter, phonetic twang favored by alternative and mainstream pop singers like Regina Spektor or Shawn Mendes, posits two hypotheses about the sound’s evolution. It could either be “a matter of trying to sound different” or “about fitting into the requirements of a musical genre.”
I don’t think these ideas are mutually exclusive. I think American obsession with individualism has trickled down into the music industry such that “artists” have learned to identify as “weird” in order to draft armies of parasocial fans.
I was new to the phenomenon of AURORA until I showed up to the venue Monday night and saw an entire street of long-skirted ticket holders lined up for entry the hour before showtime. This was a collective homage, I later learned, to AURORA’s interest in exclusively donning traditional Norwegian floor length fits — a tendency her parents were concerned might draw attention from school bullies when Aurora was a child. In other words, AURORA’s fans seem heavily invested in biographical lore. But I couldn’t help but question the basic logic of said lore: Who the fuck is going to make fun of a conventionally attractive girl for wearing feminine clothes?
The weirdest thing about AURORA’s career, launched when she was just a teenager, is how an ultra famous pop star was able to build a brand out of eccentricity when she’s clearly just copying everyone else. The obvious answer seems like a lack of literacy on behalf of her following and a monetary interest by the industry in singling out stars who are just different enough to attract attention without actually breaking the mold.
AURORA’s odd-personality is crafted almost exclusively through staging techniques (mad amounts of strobe lights and screen projections), clothing choices and plagiarism of the greats. She looks like the baby of Sia, writes reductive beats that channel the former glory of Grimes, and copies the fantastical whimsy of Bjork. She’s commonly described as “ethereal,” but AURORA captures none of the transformative world building capabilities of artists like Enya, for instance. At least pop stars like Chappel Roan, who don’t exactly cater to my tastes, have substance. I couldn’t stand how much AURORA talked between songs, all while saying nothing.
The live show was admittedly more stimulating than her recorded tracks, which are lyrically-sound but musically boring articulations of vague human realities: “I wouldn’t mind if I can’t find/ Anything to save our kind,” she writes in the song “Soulless Creatures.”
AURORA sings "Soulless Creatures" at Fillmore in Philly.
Another track called “Through the eyes of a child” better sums up AURORA's style. She consistently positions herself as a ditsy, in-the-clouds-kind-of-girl: “My brain just isn’t attached to my head!” she exclaimed in a high-pitched voice at one point during the concert. “It’s just wobbling around up there.”
I’m not saying AURORA doesn’t boast some evident skill and natural talent. In the live arena, her voice comes across as innocent and gorgeous, pure as the child-like image she’s trying to sustain even now that she’s 28-years-old. I enjoyed some of the stripped-back but powerful arrangements of her most popular pieces, like the Sufjan Stevens-style mandolin in “Runaway” and an unrestrained three-part, female vocals approach to “Murder Song.”
However, the whole shtick is based on her slightly askew personality and obvious celebrity potential (she has over three million followers on Instagram). What she actually has to say has less to do with it. For the most part, her lyrics perpetuate uninteresting binaries, using the commonplace imagery of nature (get ready to hear a lot of words repeated, like “river,” “seed,” “body”) to talk about the bad elements of humanity alongside the good.
AURORA likes to use the words "warrior" and "weirdo" a lot.
She tried to coddle the audience in a way that felt totally out of touch. “I know you are going through a very strange phase as a country,” she told us Monday night, noting that Philly was the last stop on her U.S. leg of a long international tour. “I understand that it can feel like you’re losing hope when the world disagrees with you so much. Some of you may feel like an alien in your own countries or your own families,” she said, before taking a stand on the self-evident: “We’re all humans.” I was ready for her to shut up. What did this free-wheeling European know about anything? Unless I’m missing some extremely key autobiographical information about the success story, I don’t think deciding to adopt an algae ball from a fan makes you the same kind of outcast as American kids struggling to survive legacy hatred and modern legislation.
Not to mention, her fans were pushier than your average mosh pit. While the fair-haired singer jumped around in an ugly, bedazzled sweater, one person screamed into my ear at the highly invested crowd in front of us: “STOP RECORDING! WE CAN’T SEE SHIT!” The extremity of that viewer's tension immediately transitioned into off-pitch singing alongside AURORA. Ironically, that same screamer was girlishly reciting the words: “I kept running for a soft place to fall.”
I thought back to an awkward threat AURORA made at the start of the show. Her last concert in the U.S., in Philly, was sold out. In honor of the special occasion, “I’ve arranged for a priest to come and we’re going to be married after this,” she said. “It’s gonna be really difficult, but we can do anything,” she joked.
I took off early, concerned that if I stayed until the end that I would somehow be married into a bizarre cult of bad music and open BPD behavior. I had been ignorantly hoping to hear something genuinely different by attending an ostensibly foreign concert — not to be suffocated by normies with extensive biographies... and skirts.
