It felt fitting that Olivia Rodrigo kicked off her almighty four-night run at The O2 the same day her debut album – 2021’s SOUR – became Spotify’s most streamed album of all time by a female artist.
A feast of exceptionally hooky pop-punk (more emphasis on the pop) that dealt in doomed love stories, angst-riddled drives around the pitch-black suburbs, and the poisonous sight of a recent ex palming off all your old favourite spots as original date nights with someone new, SOUR transformed the former Disney Channel child star into one of pop’s most exciting names.
And two years later came its worthy successor: amping up the rage and one-liners, and effortlessly drawing out the melodrama of discovering yourself for the first time as an adult. While there’s certainly plenty of wryly-rendered heartbreak on show, GUTS also gets its claws into some different territory.
Namely, the wild and impossible-to-fulfil societal expectations that are piled upon young women. “I'm grateful all the time,” she sing-songs on All-American Bitch, to a chiming nursery-rhyme melody, “I'm sexy and I'm kind, I'm pretty when I cry.”
Between the many costume changes, floating stages, roving audience cameras, and obligatory, camcorder footage of a young Rodrigo bellowing into a plastic microphone as a child, the show had all the usual massive pop show hallmarks.
During Logical and Enough for You, she slowly soared around the venue on an airborne silver moon, greeting her screaming fans like a royal dignitary.
Still, a tight live band, and the singer’s knack for banter kept things from feeling too remote or overly polished. “I love English food!” she exclaimed ahead of So American. “I, for real, had beans on toast for breakfast!”
Hearing Rodrigo declare her love for Jaffa Cakes, Percy Pigs, and jacket potatoes within the space of 10 seconds was admittedly not on my bingo sheet for the night, but also came as a pleasant surprise.
Best of all was the Bad Idea, Innit t-shirt Rodrigo saved for the encore; a distinctly British twist on the title of her opening song Bad Idea, Right?
And rather than letting momentum slow with her more paired-back ballads, Rodrigo leaned into the sparseness instead, venturing down one of her jutting runways for acoustic performances of Happier and Favourite Crime, seated cross-legged on the floor.
Drivers Licence, the song where it all began, got the grand piano treatment early on in the night.
There were also plenty of confident, surprising sequencing choices in the setlist. Few other artists on her level would dare to deploy a song as huge as Vampire just three songs in, or skip default, odds-on confetti gun closer Good 4 U as the finale in favour of the Nineties-flavoured gang vocals of Get Him Back!
Fortunately, Rodrigo’s hit rate allows such freedom, and it is testament to the strength and ubiquity of Rodrigo’s still lean back catalogue that this often felt like a Greatest Hits show rather than her first arena tour.
