Olivia Rodrigo was off to a roaring start as her Guts World Tour arrived at Climate Pledge Arena on Tuesday, blasting through her spiky rocker “Bad Idea Right?” and awkward-girl-at-the-party banger “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl.” You could feel the rabid crowd’s collective goose bumps rise as the opening piano notes of “Vampire” — the biggest hit off her sophomore album, “Guts” — came flickering in. The 15,000 or so fans who packed the place for the first of Rodrigo’s two highly anticipated Seattle shows erupted as the dramatic, cryin’-at-the-moon piano ballad started to churn, working through its tension-building progression that shook up the crowd like a can of Coke.
The room barely had time to decarbonate before the 21-year-old pop-punk pop star delivered the megahit that made her a household name, “Drivers License,” two songs later. Reemerging at a piano as smoke billowed across the stage, making it seem as if she was sitting inside a cloud, Rodrigo dived into the dashboard-punching power ballad with an extra epic bridge. “I still [expletive] love you, babe!” she and the rest of the room sang at the top of their lungs, punctuating the moment with an emotional f-bomb.
It was kind of a punk-rock move. Pardon the pun, but it takes guts to play the two biggest songs off your only two albums within the first 20 minutes of your first headlining arena tour. The last time Rodrigo came to town , she was just two shows into her first big headlinin.