Lorde's VMA Dance

About

Lorde's VMA Dance refers to a performance by New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde during the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards. Claiming that she had the flu during the performance, Lorde did not sing the song "Homemade Dynamite" because of her illness and instead danced in an improvisational manner while wearing a silver dress that many online regarded as humorous and confusing.

Origin

On August 27th, 2017, MTV aired the 2017 Video Music Awards, which honored the best music videos of the year. Singer-songwriter Lorde was set to perform during the live broadcast. However, because of the flu, she was not able to sing her hit song "Homemade Dynamite," and therefore, just danced as the song played over the speakers.

That night, MTV posted the video of the performance (shown below) on their official YouTube account. The post received more than 400,000 views in less than 24 hours.

Spread

Following the performance, various media outlet began posting gifs of the performance. Entertainment Weekly^[1] tweeted a gif of Lorde dancing with the caption "When your song comes on. The tweet (shown below, left) received more than 500 retweets and 1,800 likes. Giphy^[2] tweeted a different gif with the caption "Walking up to the club like:" The post (shown below, center) received more than 660 retweets and 2,400. Jezebel^[3] tweeted a gif with the caption "Just… WTF, Lorde." The post (shown below, right) received more than 270 retweets and 1,000 likes.

Other users posted video of other weird dances from popular culture and social media. That night Twitter^[4] user @platingomez posted a video of a runway model dancing awkwardly with the caption "loved lorde's performance at the #VMAs." The post (shown below) 1,500 retweets and 4,000 likes within 24 hours.

That night, Twitter^[9] account @LordeDancing launched, which posted various remix videos of Lorde dancing, replacing the msuic to which she dances (example below).

Several media outlets covered the performance and reaction to Lorde's dance, including Pitchfork,^[5] BuzzFeed] Vox^[7] and more. Twitter^[8] published a Moments page about the performance and reaction, which received more than 1,000 likes in less than 24 hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References