This live performance took place at home due to Corona-Virus restrictions which allowed more people to view her performance as most people may not have typically been able to make a live performance but because this is a live-streamed performance, she had a larger audience capacity than normal.
Lauren appears to be performing with a backing track meaning that everything was perfectly in time, which gave it a soothing feel because dynamics were also precisely fixed. It would have had more of a live feel if she had a band actually playing instead of a backing track but due to social distancing restrictions and this performance taking place in her home, it wasn’t possible.
A connection with the audience is key but also incredibly hard to do, especially when you can’t even see your audience. However, Lauren managed to pull of at least a little connection between her and her audience by singing directly into the camera on multiple occasions. This made it feel a lot like she was singing to us and it left a friendly feel to her whole performance. Alongside the audience being at home, because she live-streamed instead of having to buy tickets, it allowed anyone to have access, including people who aren’t fans, so she had to make sure it was a good performance in all aspects to keep her fans and the general public engaged. She managed this by singing the song differently to the recording, i.e. sustaining a few notes, making a few notes higher and having a softer and more raspy tone to her voice.
Due to performing at home, she wasn’t wearing typical stage clothes or in a stage type venue. However, this formed more of a connection with the fans because we was in her home so it gave the whole performance a warm and friendly feeling and quite a chilled/relaxed atmosphere.
Being at home gave Lauren a chance to be creative in ways to engage with the audience, which she did incredibly well by changing the song slightly and giving it a friendly atmosphere, but it also gave a little bit of a messy feel due to being able to see a lot of wires etc. There wasn’t much stage presence so the performance was quite still, but she could play it off as being calming due to the candles lit in the background and the overall relaxed atmosphere, and the headphones kind of eliminated the whole “live” feel as you don’t tend to see live performers with headphones on.
Overall, she used the facilities she had to the best of her advantage, due to difficult situations, and she was also very creative in a lot of ways. However, it lacked a lot of stage presence, but was kind of made up for thanks to the relaxed atmosphere.