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 headlining tour, building on the success of her 2021 debut “Sour.
” The former Disney Channel teen star could have filled Climate Pledge Arena back then, but opted for the smaller WAMU Theater. Tuesday’s 105-minute show started promptly at 8:30 p.m.
after scheduled opener PinkPantheress dropped off the tour last week. With a second show Wednesday virtually sold out (a smattering of primo-priced tickets remained Wednesday morning) , a step up to stadiums might not be far off for the young superstar, who is redefining teen idol parameters for her generation by crossing sonic borders and celebrating her relatable warts-and-all insecurities. Now 60-plus shows into her Guts World Tour, Rodrigo looked and sounded far more confident and stage-seasoned than she did two years ago at WAMU.
Rodrigo is now well accustomed to handling those full-throated arena sing-alongs that occasionally risk overpowering her own mighty vocals, knowing when to cede the moment to the crowd, as she did toward the end of “Drivers License.” Rodrigo’s maiden arena run featured several hallmarks — or cliches, for the cynics — of the pop-star arena tour: the overhead serenades, singing “Happy Birthday” to a fan, the end-of-night confetti blasts. Rodrigo shouldered the added weight of playing the bigger rooms largely with her own performance and by drawing on her acting background.
The singer played to the cameras almost as much as the fans, greeting and waving to nearly every cranny of the arena while dangling from a giant crescent moon that carried her over the crowd during a folk-pop acoustic run. Whether it was the wistful fade-out glance while posing among her dancers to cap “Pretty Isn’t Pretty” or the sassy lip lick during the slinky “Jealousy, Jealousy,” Rodrigo brought a smart and simple theatricality without relying on too many production tricks. “I’m so sick of myself,” she boomed, dropping to her knees and slapping the stage floor in physical catharsis on a rockified “Jealousy, Jealousy.
” The nature of much of Rodrigo’s catalog has helped her scale up her live show while keeping a relatively minimal stage production. The rock-star-at-heart bookended her main set with stretches of fizzy pop-punk numbers, returning from her final pre-encore wardrobe change to the chugging riff of “Brutal,” the teenage angst anthem of the decade. Oozing with attitude, the headbanging bird flip to the suffocating pressures of 21st-century adolescence segued into a grungy “Obsessed” that saw Rodrigo shredding on guitar alongside her seven-member backing band.
After the balled-up fist of “All-American Bitch,” Rodrigo returned for her encore of “Good 4 U” into “Get Him Back!” wearing a shirt that read “Never Se(a) ttle.” Earlier in the show, she had praised the “beautiful city,” where she spent a few days hiking and shopping ahead of her two-night stand. While much of Rodrigo’s core audience may not be old enough to vote in this fall’s election (or even drive their parents to the ballot box), her 2000s pop-punk references and traditional pop-vocal balladry offer intergenerational on-ramps.
Tuesday’s crowd ranged from chaperoned grade schoolers and teens to millennials and Gen Xers, not all of them parents, a testament to Rodrigo’s big tent that’s only getting bigger..
