Australian singer-songwriter Gordi performed her track “Peripheral Lover” on The Kelly Clarkson Show, offering fans a preview of her upcoming album Like Plasticine.
Gordi (aka Sophie Payten) performed the emotional track on the daytime variety show on Wednesday, June 12th, between dates of a packed tour.
Payten delivered a stripped back version of the emotional and dreamy single which delves into the early stages of queer relationships, when one person is still in the closet. Check out the performance below.
“Accepting the available love instead of it orbiting around you. There comes a breaking point, a demand, a pleading for honesty – and the relationship either explodes into the open, or melts from the periphery away into nothing,” she explained after its release in February.
“It’s a simple song with a simple message, and so I wrote ‘KISS’ (‘keep it simple, stupid’) on a post-it note and stuck it on my desk in Melbourne, while I layered up guitars and synths and drums. Me at my most ‘pop’ – terrifying and ludicrously fun.”
While introducing Gordi’s performance, Clarkson noted the singer’s break from music came as she returned to work as a doctor during the COVID-19 pandemic. Payten had previously worked at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydnay as a junior doctor after completely her medical studies in 2018, but quit the position in January 2020 to work on her second album Our Two Skins.
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Her time back in scrubs would go on to shape the emotional depth of her first full-length album since 2020 Like Plastecine, set for release on August 8th.
“Being surrounded by death made me think about how beautiful life is… I thought about all the ways we are like plasticine—how forces we can’t control contort us into shapes, stretch us thin, and test our resilience,” she said. “But sometimes, heart-wrenching change can be a thing of beauty.”
Gordi will wrap up the US leg of her tour in Washington, DC, on June 15th, before heading to Europe for 15 shows. She’ll return to Australia for the Darwin Festival on August 23rd, before taking the show across the country from November 4th–16th.
For information on tickets to her international tour, click here.
Gordi 2025 Tour Dates
Sunday, June 15th
Songbyrd, Washington, DC
Thursday, June 26th
SaSaZu, Prague, Czech Republic
Friday, June 27th
Letnia Scena Progresji, Warsaw, Poland
Tuesday, July 1st
Astra Kulturhaus, Berlin, Germany
Thursday, July 3rd
Le Trianon, Paris, France
Monday, July 7th
013 Poppodium, Tilburg, Netherlands
Tuesday, July 8th
Ronda, Utrecht, Netherlands
Tuesday, July 15th
Pelicano, A Coruña, Spain
Thursday, July 17th
Razzmatazz, Barcelona, Spain
Saturday, August 23rd
Darwin Festival, Darwin, NT
Thursday–Sunday, September 11th–14th
Sounds From A Safe Harbour Festival, Cork, Ireland
Sunday, September 14th
Kino Events House, Cork, Ireland
Wednesday, September 17th
Jaki, Cologne, Germany
Thursday, September 18th
Lark, Berlin, Germany
Friday–Saturday, September 19th–20th
Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg, Germany
Sunday, September 21st
TivoliVredenburg (Club Nine), Utrecht, Netherlands
Wednesday, September 24th
Trix, Antwerp, Belgium
Tuesday, November 4th
Riverside Theatre, Perth, WA
Wednesday, November 5th
Riverside Theatre, Perth, WA
Friday, November 7th
Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide, SA
Sunday, November 9th
Palais Theatre, Melbourne, VIC
SOLD OUT
Monday, November 10th
Palais Theatre, Melbourne, VIC
Wednesday, November 12th
State Theatre, Sydney, NSW
SOLD OUT
Thursday, November 13th
State Theatre, Sydney, NSW
SOLD OUT
Saturday, November 15th
Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, QLD
SOLD OUT
Sunday, November 16th
Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane, QLD
SOLD OUT
