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As a pop star, Olivia Rodrigo wields a rather unusual weapon. She is an astute writer and an unselfconscious singer. She hates artificial things. She is modest and not mean. In just her third year, she’s near the stratosphere, with her debut album going four times platinum and winning her the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, while somehow being an underdog. achieved fame.
But the weapon she returns to again and again is her razor-sharp and versatile curse words, including her 2020 smash hit “Driver’s License,” the first single from her debut album “Sour,” and last year’s It was also featured on the Grammy-nominated single “Vampire” from her second album, Guts. It is found in many other places as well, lending added fervor to her plea of anguish. She wants to reveal that there is something boiling beneath that cool exterior of hers.
Those were the words Rodrigo couldn’t stop talking about during the opening performance of his Guts World Tour on Friday night at Acresure Arena in Palm Desert, California. She used it for emphasis, to carry negative connotations, and to express resentment. However, most of the time she used it casually in banter between songs. Not because I needed it, but because I felt like I was getting away with something by using it.
Much of Rodrigo’s music, especially “Guts,” contains detailed, delusional ruminations about newfound fame and its discontent, and after being taught how important it is to be good, he turns to evil. It’s about how it feels to do something. It is precisely at the crossroads where freedom is about to be replaced by injustice.
This applied to her performance as well, bringing musical theater perfection and order to the pop-punk and piano ballads that her songs alternated with. For an hour and a half, Rodrigo alternately howled and begged, stomped and fell. She led her devout crowd of 11,000 people, quite a leap from the theaters she performed in on her first tour, but she performed a singalong as loud as a church, but never rowdy. Did.
During the concert, Rodrigo gestured and nodded, singing the first verse of “Get Him Back!” with abandon. At the end of “All American Bitch,” she used a megaphone to knock over a microphone stand, and during “Obsessed,” she performed harshly as the camera peered through the transparent part of the stage.
Although she has an exuberant stage presence, she’s not a full-service pop star, which is good for avoiding that trap. Rodrigo is at his surest when reciting songs that are faithful and unshowy. She opened the night with the endlessly energetic “Bad Idea Right?” “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” follows, perhaps the truest statement of the purpose of her previous work, with her dry, groaning ’90s guitar conveying anxiety and melancholy.
These songs highlight Rodrigo’s enthusiasm for rock, which is serious and studied and enhanced by an impressively roaring band that gave her a soup of guts. But she continued her troika of even stronger rejections, from “Vampire” to “Traitor” to “Driver’s License.” A series of slow ballads are among her most exhilarating songs. (Before the show, I watched a music video in the back of a tricked-out Mercedes Sprinter van in the parking lot, listening to three girls, probably about 8 years old, shouting “traitor” in their heads. It was as moving as it sounds.)
But her songs didn’t need much more than the songs themselves to feel great. At the end of “The Grudge,” Rodrigo stood sharply alone at the foot of the stage, showing flashes of self-sufficiency and defiance. (The dancers joined her for a few songs, and she awkwardly danced along for a few.) Later in the performance, sitting on the edge of the stage, she gasped and sang “Happier” and the casually sinister “Favorite Crime.” ” was sung. Tentacles. And while two of her most heartbreaking songs, “Logical” and “Enough for You,” had her floating above the audience on a crescent moon, it wasn’t the aerial spectacle that was most exciting; It was the steady tremor in her voice. .
In his outfits, Rodrigo embraces a style that combines modesty and toughness. Her fans are paying attention. There was near unanimity among the crowd regarding her attire. She was a young girl, mostly a teenager, wearing a mid-thigh skirt and black boots or Chuck Taylors. Almost everyone had at least one shiny item. It reminded me of early Taylor Swift tours, where thousands of young fans arrived wearing sundresses and cowboy boots. At one point, Rodrigo asked the audience if anyone came with her father (many) and then if anyone came with a boyfriend or girlfriend (not many). Then she asked if anyone else had dressed up for her show, and the crowd roared almost in unison. (Most men’s restrooms were converted to unisex that night, as women greatly outnumbered men.)
The merchandise booth sells accessories from Girls’ Generation, including a lavender butterfly-shaped tote bag, a star-shaped face sticker (mimicking the cover of the album “Sour”), and a Band-Aid with Rodrigo’s catchphrase on it. was selling. And on stage, the performers were promoting the power of Girls’ Generation. All members of Rodrigo’s band and dance troupe were female, nonbinary, or transgender.
Supporting young women is also part of Rodrigo’s tour, with proceeds from each ticket going to her charity Fund 4 Good, which “advocates for girls’ education, supports reproductive rights, The plan is to support “community-based nonprofit organizations that prevent gender-based violence.” ”
It is consistent with Rodrigo’s enduring and compelling story that girlhood is not without its difficulties. Her rendition of “Teenage Dream,” a ballad about the feeling that the best years of her life may be behind her, shows that she’s so caught up in the performance that she doesn’t know the reality of stardom. The back visual of Rodrigo as a child was particularly enlightening.
The sexually frank singer Chapel Lawn opened the show, but her loud voice was drowned out by her arrangements. She was the opposite of Rodrigo, who sings about sex with references and punchlines often hidden in the lyrics. (Opening in April will be Remi Wolfe, Pink Panther Res, and Breeders, a highly anticipated event for those with cross-generational curiosities.)
The subject is still raw for Rodrigo, who never distances himself from his youngest fans or his younger self. But that may change soon. Rodrigo celebrated his 21st birthday a few days before this show, perhaps the last officially recognized dividing line between youth and adulthood. She didn’t let it pass without comment.
“I went to a gas station the other day and bought a pack of cigarettes,” she said, sitting at the piano after a performance of “Driver’s License,” in what could be the only real cheating of the night. Ta.
But then she confessed, “I promise I didn’t consume it, but I just bought it because I could.” Did she add a curse word for emphasis? She cheated.
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