If Lorde is seen by some as one of pop music’s great mystics, she is also a master of decreation — or unmaking her persona and herself. Midway through her performance at the Chicago stop of her “Ultrasound” world tour, she paused the show and asked for the arena lights to be turned on so that she could get a look at the audience.

“It’s you who’s made these songs live the way they do,” she said, the bright lights acting as an equalizer of sorts: robbed of its shadow, her face was suddenly just like those in the audience. For that moment, Lorde was Ella Yelich-O’Connor, or as close to her real-life self as her onstage presence would allow. “It’s nothing to do with me, it’s everything to do with you.”

The crowd roared. It was one moment among many of deconstruction, reconstruction and t

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