Lorde’s Bowie tribute ‘blew audiences away’

Watch the performance here, the Bowie tribute kicks in at the 2:25 mark.

For the BRITs, it was Lorde who led a slightly more understated tribute to David Bowie, who received a posthumous Icon award.

Lorde performed an emotional tribute to Bowie at the Brit Awards with the late singer’s touring band.

In his acceptance speech, Oldman described Bowie as “the very definition, the living embodiment, of that singular word: icon”.

Ch-ch-check out Lorde’s extra British Life on Mars in remembrance of David (above)!!!

With her acid, disaffected take on the song, Lorde resisted some of the over-the-top sentimentality of Gaga’s performance, which culminated with the anthemic “Heroes”.

The passing of David Bowie seemed to have greatly affected Lorde as as it did with many artists. Bowie’s backing band from his last tour in 2003 – bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, pianist Mike Garson, drummer Sterling Campbell, keyboardist Catherine Russell and guitarists Earl Slick and Gerry Leonard – began to play a medley of the singer’s work as footage from music videos was projected.

She said: “For me it’s nearly impossible to think of him in the past tense”. Following a brief conversation meeting she felt he “heralded [her] into [her] next new life”, and made her feel “proud of [her] spiky strangeness because he had been proud of his”.