Olivia Rodrigo review – pop punk icon fizzes with energy
‘With this song I wrote about my very first heartbreak,” explains Olivia Rodrigo, introducing Drivers License, as the packed Academy crowd cheer in recognition. “I remember not being able to articulate how I was feeling until I wrote it.” Moments later, she tells how Enough for You came about because she was made to feel she wasn’t good enough for the guy she was dating at the time. “Has anyone ever felt like that?” she asks and the crowd roars even louder. We aren’t told whether such songs are about one particular rotter, or a series of them, but it matters more that she is audibly and convincingly singing the lives of her mostly teenage female audience, who yell every word along with her.
“Where is my fucking teenage dream?” rages the singer, a moot point in these dark times for many young people. With a No 1 album (last year’s Sour) already, Rodrigomania is built on the combination of her passionate, emotional lyrics and some really zippy tunes, which vary between Courtney Barnett/Transvision Vamp pop punk and bedroom power ballads. Covers of Avril Lavigne’s debut smash Complicated
and Republica’s 90s hit Ready to Go are in the same vein (although, whisper it, at least half the audience don’t seem to know the latter).
Rodrigo’s band – four fifths women – may look like they’re styled by PunxR-Us but play with vim and vinegar, and the star herself – in a petite sparkly dress and bovver boots – veers between aching yearning (in the likes of Hope Ur OK) and bundles of fizzy energy. She sits at a silver piano for All I Want, then sings standing on top of it and finally drapes herself across it for Good 4 U as ticker tape erupts. Slightly disappointingly, there’s no mention of Roe v Wade or the US’s new abortion laws, which she memorably protested against at Glastonbury. Still, anyone out there who thought she wasn’t good enough must be kicking themselves very hard indeed.
• At Eventim Apollo, London, 6 and 7 July.