The super-sold-out Olivia Rodrigo concert Tuesday night at Enterprise Center proved one thing for sure: When it comes to concert audiences, nothing compares to teenage girls. It’s a tale as old as rock music itself, going back to when girls shrieked themselves into conniptions when Elvis shifted his pelvis and when they screamed so loud at Beatles concerts that no one could hear the Fab Four at all.
But now we are solidly in the era of arenas (or stadiums) filled with teen girls who caterwaul not just when their pop heroes materialize on stage but who stand, dance and scream along to every word of every song in a full-throated squall for the entirety of the show.
Such was the case during Rodrigo’s sizzling one-hour-and-45-minute set at Enterprise. The audience was so overwhelmingly female that half of the men’s restrooms in the concourse were relabeled for women only. I had to walk halfway around the arena to find a men’s room. (The beer lines, on the other hand, were a breeze.) Girls everywhere were decked out in purple — Olivia’s fave, natch — heavy on the cowboy hats and bows and sequined skirts. These fans are Livies — my campaign to dub them ‘Rigomanics has gone nowhere — and they give Swifties a run for their friendship-bracelet-wearing, revenge-song-shouting money (although, of course, the Venn diagram between the two fanbases is more or less a solid circle).
When Rodrigo first appeared on stage at Enterprise, rising from a trapdoor in the fog-drenched stage, so enraptured was a young girl behind me, she actually yelled, “She must be a hologram! That can’t be really her!” But it was indeed the real Olivia, making her return to St. Louis after her 2022 show at the Factory, a venue she had already outgrown at the time. This time she thrilled 22,000 fans who went totally bizaardvark for her, and all of this while turning just 21 years old last month.
Fans ponied up a pretty penny to see her. Local high schoolers were checking ticket prices all day hoping they would fall as showtime approached, but seats stayed stubbornly north of $200 each. Parents posted desperate pleas on social media to score tickets for their kids. I was one of the lucky ones who was able to take my own teenage daughter to the show. Dad idea, right?
It has been a skyrocket shot to the top for Rodrigo, and if 2021’s Sour made her a pop-punk, bedroom-ballad sensation, its follow-up, last-year’s Guts, sealed the deal in establishing her as a generational pop superstar. Her diaristic rockers and ballads about ex-boyfriends, insecurities, comparing herself to her ex’s new girlfriend and driving around the suburbs crying and ruminating on all of the above are built with such melodically sturdy architecture and delivered with such charmingly pop-smart vocal appeal that Olivia Rodrigo songs are bound to find their way into the quivering hearts of her fans and onto the top of the pop charts for as long as Livvy cares to write them.
And fans last night were treated to nearly everything in Olivia’s catalog so far: All 12 songs from Guts, plus 1 of the album’s bonus cuts, 9 of Sour’s 11 tracks and “Can’t Catch Me Now” from the new Hunger Games film. And when every song in your show is met with squeals of elation, why play any covers?
After a video backdrop of giant candles spelling out the word GUTS — reportedly an exact replica of different sections of Rodrigo’s actual large intestine — burned and toppled as a way of counting down the minutes until showtime, Rodrigo hit the stage with a one-two punch of bangers — “Bad Idea, Right?” and “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” — announcing that this was going to be a rock show. The entirety of Rodrigo’s five-piece band, as well as two backup singers and eight dancers, is made up of female and nonbinary performers, led by hard-hitting drummer Hayley Brownell and guitarist Heather Baker. Baker is the lead guitarist for the popular all-female Iron Maiden tribute band, the Iron Maidens, so you know she can put the pedal to the metal, and when these players were given the green light, they could bring the heavy thunder.
Rodrigo started in a matching silver-sequined push-up bra and micro miniskirt, strutting around in black Docs, skipping down the stage’s two side runways, side-eyeing and tongue-curling and lip-biting for the crowd. And singing. Here in the Lana/Billie/Phoebe era of whispercore vocals, Rodrigo prefers, refreshingly, to open her mouth and sing with a full-bodied tone, and she belted it out all night. Not as much as the audience did, however, and during “Vampire,” with the pop star standing in front of a giant full-moon backdrop, and “Traitor,” the crowd was deafening in its larynx-shredding unison gale.
The octet of dancers marched out for the first time during “Traitor,” executing jerky expressionistic movements while their silhouettes were replicated on the video backdrop, like tortured mannequins on strings. Later, during “Love is Embarrassing,” Rodrigo joined in with some legs-akimbo dance moves of her own — the only time during the show that she attempted any group choreography — while her dancers executed maniacal cheerleader moves, coming off like half Toni Basil, half Rocky Horror during perhaps the night’s most fun sequence.
Rodrigo sat at the piano for a faithful reading of her breakthrough hit “Drivers License” before introducing “Teenage Dream” by talking about the fears of growing up that inspired the song. “I’m 21 now, and I’m so happy, and I know myself so well,” she said. “I actually think growing up is not so scary after all. It’s kind of a beautiful thing, so cheers to that.” To complete the bildungsroman theme, home videos of kindergarten-era Olivia flashed on the screen as she sang, and if anyone but me felt mauled by such self-reverence of one’s own cuteness, no one let on.
During “Making the Bed,” one of the night’s best flashlight-wavers, Rodrigo sang it while lying supine on a bedlike riser, as an overhead camera captured her twisting seductively at all the self-absorbed angst of it all, and it’s an O-Rod speciality to color adolescent whining with irresistibly melodious slow-dance sweep. The top-shot camera returned during “Lacy” as the dancers formed leggy kaleidoscopic patterns around Rodrigo, now dressed in a black triangle bralette and high-waisted hot-pants (the kind your grandma used to call a girdle), as the bird’s-eye view turned the scene into something from an Esther Williams musical.
The show’s big production moment came midway through when Rodrigo sat on a large bedazzled crescent moon that floated around the arena. She waved continuously to ecstatic fans while singing “Logical” to the south side of the stadium and “Enough For You” to the north side, pausing between songs to lead a scream-off between sections of the area.
Beyond that mooncraft, Rodrigo kept the affair relatively simple in terms of production, eschewing most of the high-end technological razzle-dazzle that defined recent tours by the likes of Beyonce and SZA. Instead of going big, she made the place seem small, drawing the audience in by sitting cross-legged on the stage at the end of the runway with guitarist Daisy Spencer for acoustic versions of “Happier” and “Favorite Crime,” turning the arena into an intimate living-room singalong. Someone felt cozy enough to toss a blank tank top that landed on Olivia that read, “Dump Him.” “I agree!” she said, holding the shirt up.
Later, Rodrigo stood stock-still while singing “The Grudge,” featuring some of her strongest vocals of the evening, her visage betraying her best pouting anguish, before the band muscled up with glam-metal guitar crunch, anchored by the brawny bass playing of Moa Munoz, during an extended intro to “Brutal” and across the song’s snarling punk-wave groove. The rest of the show maintained that tough punkish scrimmage, and during “Obsessed,” she writhed on the end of the runway on a see-through platform as a camera filmed her voyeuristically from below.
For the encore, she reemerged wearing a shirt that read, “Ne Pas Toucher” (“Do Not Touch”), for the jealous kiss-off of “Good 4 U,” capping the night with “Get Him Back!” singing the first verse through a red megaphone as her gyrating dancers surrounded her and confetti cannons showered the crowd. As with the rest of the night, the fans were all cast members in the larger set piece; accordingly, the girls in the crowd spent as much time with their phones aloft filming themselves singing along with Olivia as they spent filming Olivia herself, stopping only long enough to reapply their chest and face glitter.
Finally, at the end of the night, Rodrigo dropped down into the aisles to mingle with the fans in the front rows of the pit, many of whom promptly ignored the missive on her shirt as she reached out at frantic hands and leaned in for hugs. It was a fitting finale for an dazzling artist who demonstrated preternatural command, skill and poise for her age. But as that moonflight earlier indicated, she is already on top of the world.
Subscribe to Riverfront Times newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
