On most huge pop tours, there's a moment when fans reach a real fever pitch — when the lights dim right before the show starts, or when the intro to the artist's biggest hit begins, or during the break before the encore. All of this happened on Olivia Rodrigo's first arena tour – but her favorite part of the show was when those drum-shattering screams were, in fact, insane.
“When we play 'All-American Bitch,'” says Rodrigo Bulletin board“There's a part at the end of the song where I ask the audience to think of something that pisses them off and then tell them to scream about it when the lights go out.” On the opener of her 2023 album GUTS, Rodrigo juxtaposes folky, brooding calm in the lyrics with raging pop-punk in the chorus as she exposes society's double standards for young women before unleashing a piercing wail. For nearly a hundred nights this year, the singer-songwriter closed her main set by adding her own scream to an arena already full of them. “It's definitely cathartic for me,” he says, “and I hope it is for the audience as well.”
The same could be said for the ensemble INTESTINES tour, where Rodrigo's fans around the world found the space to unleash their frozen energy, as well as their enthusiasm for one of the biggest young superstars of the decade. After bursting onto the scene in 2021 with her debut album, I'm angryand his No. 1 smashes “driver's license” and “good 4 u,” the former Disney+ TV star won the 2022 Grammy Award for Best New Artist and quickly ascended the pop A-list. However, the 2022 tour supporting Sour which played mostly theaters had to deal with lingering concerns about COVID-19 and catered to a limited number of international markets as Rodrigo, then 19, found her sea legs as a live performer.
Read Olivia Rodrigo's full cover story here.
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