Lorde rules in her 1st Pittsburgh show at the Petersen Events Center

When it strode onto the scene in 2013, the pop song “Royals” defiantly took over the Billboard Hot 100 and changed the face of that decade’s popular music. New Zealand artist Lorde won two Grammys as a result of the song’s rule, an incredible feat considering she was still in her late teens at the time of its release.

She rode that wave of success through four acclaimed studio albums in the past 12 years, including this year’s “Virgin.”

And yet, until Friday night, she’d never played a show in Pittsburgh.

All the years of buildup were worth it for an overjoyed crowd at the Petersen Events Center in Oakland. Fortunately, the cathartic concert was floor-shaking — sometimes literally — and totally met the highest of expectations.

Now 28, the pop rebel seemed secure in her skin throughout the show’s 23 songs. From the first forceful moments of “Hammer” — the show’s opener and the opener of the new album — she owned the stage. Along with two backup dancers, she strutted, bounced, swayed and danced like there weren’t thousands of screaming people watching.

Around the middle of the set, she sat to discuss what had brought her to this place of inner peace: learning about herself in the process of her 20s. “I think it’s my job to be as real with you as I possibly can and to … give you as much of my pure self as possible,” she said.

“I give you this part of myself because you know exactly what to do with it,” she added.

The fans reciprocated that enthusiasm. Singing loud enough to be heard down Heart Attack Hill, I’m sure, they cheered along when “Royals” got the second slot of the setlist (I just love this trend of the big hits coming early).

While Lorde is a pop artist, she dabbles in many styles and references. This run of shows, dubbed the Ultrasound Tour, felt industrial, with its minimalist, tech-heightened and casual stage setup and many flickering strobe lights. During “Shapeshifter,” a UFO-like ring of blue and white lights descended on the stage, and during “Supercut,” the crowd watched her perform the end of the song from an onstage treadmill.

She also noted that her outfits for the tour were her own clothes, and she seemed perfectly comfortable in them — and out of them. During the heightened “Current Affairs,” she removed her pair of worn-in jeans to reveal a pair of equally comfy-looking boxer briefs. Later, she would strip to considerably skimpier attire and still perform with abandon.

Lorde seemed pretty fond of Pittsburgh, especially our famous bridges. “I’m like, ‘I’m not going to talk about the bridges onstage,’ but here I am,” she said to great applause, adding that her father is a civil engineer.

Musically, the set was fairly diverse, but Lorde’s sound is most impactful when she utilizes sparse verses and lush, layered, booming choruses. Fortunately, that flavor of song is also a huge crowd-pleaser at a live show.

Take, for example, “Broken Glass,” a song with verses that are as elastic as a rubber band and a chorus that had Lorde confidently reaching for the high notes. Or the anthemic “Team,” another big crowd sing-along. She took a moment during the bridge to yell out “free Palestine!”

But she could also take it down a notch, as she did with “Oceanic Feeling,” a song that felt musically like the ebb and flow of a tide and got phone flashlights shining all over the Pete. She followed that with the pop-rocky “Big Star,” molding her expressive voice to the tone and style of each song perfectly.

The most tension-relieving tune of the night was pre-encore Lorde classic “Green Light,” which had both excellent instrumental and vocal build and then release, with the singer herself looking dramatically euphoric at its green-lit end.

And then, the two encore songs — “David” and the mass-jump-inducing “Ribs” — had the crowd leaving the arena about as pumped as you can get at 11 p.m. on a Friday night.

Hopefully this pop royal will grace us with her presence again sooner rather than later.