The Daily Telegraph - Features
Rodrigo’s all-girl power snarls in fishnets
Music
Olivia Rodrigo
OVO Hydro Arena, Glasgow
★★★★★
Woe betide anyone who didn’t get the memo: minidress, combat boots or Converse trainers, and a strictly black, purple, and pink dress code. The Olivia Rodrigo fan uniform is well-established by now, three years into the American singer’s stardom – as evidenced by the thousands of girls on the appropriately pink walkway to Glasgow’s OVO Hydro arena.
Rodrigo was supposed to kick off the UK leg of her world tour, a daunting 77 dates, last weekend at Manchester’s ill-fated Co-Op Live arena, but she became the latest casualty of the venue’s bungled opening. Instead, Scotland had the first taste of her pop-rock theatrics last night. She emerged to unapologetically loud guitar, pouting and snarling to match the energy of her all-girl band.
This was more rock show than pop extravaganza – though there were costume changes, dancers, and a suspended crescent moon, upon which Rodrigo floated above the young crowd, through a sea of glow-in-the-dark stars not unlike a teenage bedroom ceiling.
Mostly, though, she gambolled about, a small fish-netted figure clearly at ease in front of the cameras that magnified her every move. The 21-year-old is a former Disney star but her music veers away from polished piety towards messy emotion and selfdeprecation, from the gleeful expletives that litter her verses to her chipped nail varnish on the cover of her latest album, Guts.
On opening song Bad Idea, Right? she stumbled towards an unwise hook-up with an old flame. Later in the show, she obsessed over her new boyfriend’s exgirlfriend – “I know she’s been asleep on my side of your bed” – and her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend: “So when you gonna tell her that we did that too?” She used her musical theatre background to her advantage, whether through lip-wobbles, Gwen Stefani-style vocal gymnastics, impeccable comedic timing, or sheer lung power. She yo-yoed between girlish and unladylike, between piano ballad and angsty rock, taking to a grand piano to perform her breakthrough 2021 hit Drivers License. That track may have catapulted her to the big time, but her raucous final few songs – which included the Elvis Costello-borrowing Brutal and enjoyably bratty Good 4 U – set her apart from her chart-topping peers.
Whether rocking out with her band or singing “happy birthday” to a fan, Olivia Rodrigo seemed every bit the girl at school you longed to be, or at least be friends with: uncomplicated, relatable, fun. If she’s playing a part, she’s doing it disarmingly brilliantly.