Review: Olivia Rodrigo’s First-Ever Full Concert Performance

Photo by Scott Newton, courtesy of Austin City Limits

Mark Oct. 2, 2021 at ACL Live as a possibly all-time date for the “We Saw Them When” files, the occasion being what by most data appears to have been the first-ever full concert performance by burgeoning pop star Olivia Rodrigo.

”Burgeoning” may be an imperfect word to use for a Disney corporation star who’s already had two chart-topping hits, one of which is perhaps the most powerfully crafted three minutes of laboratory-pure pop/rock of the last decade or so. For 35 minutes of alternately high-energy or confessional vocal and light instrumental performance on Saturday, Rodrigo displayed the singing chops, stage presence, and singular charm that make it not unreasonable to see her having a Taylor Swift-ian ceiling when it comes to what’s possible in the years ahead for her career.

Taking the stage with a five-piece all-woman band and kicking off with the bitter stomp of "Brutal," she showed the awareness that comes with years in show business by playing and singing directly into the banks of cameras assembled in front of the theater’s stage for PBS' eternal music show Austin City Limits. At every opportunity, the capacity crowd (dominantly female, median age somewhere around 12) added complimentary sing-along vocals that affirmed just how much Rodrigo’s debut album SOUR has become a teenage soundtrack in only a handful of months.

(Aside: “Deja Vu” has a line where the scorned narrator laments an ex turning a new love on to Billy Joel songs by singing “Uptown Girl” to her. That song was released in 1983, making it more than twice as old as the 18-year-old singer, and somewhere around three times the age of much of the audience. It’s a reference that lands… weirdly, which may be what makes it effective.)

As a new artist with a single, sub-40-minute album to her credit and a commitment for two more years with Disney, Rodrigo’s first proper concert packed a lot into a short time window: a handful of moments (“Happier,” “Traitor” among them) where she showed off her impressive vocal range and sustain; turns behind the house piano, including on the run through “Drivers License” where the crowd effectively sang the entire song with/to her, and taking to a stool with an acoustic guitar for the confessional and sparse “Enough For You.” That last move was one that presented probably the highest likelihood of Rodrigo stubbing her toe and needing a reshoot, but like every other turn on the night she displayed the chops and presence to make it a shift in mood that stood in relief for what was to come next.

That was, of course, the show-ending exclamation point of “Good 4 U” that saw the band locked into the tightest rhythmic pocket of the night while the singer gathered somehow more confidence and star power to propel the song out and up with maximum velocity.

Experienced live, the chart-topper became somehow more overpowering in its ability to harness teenage lover angst and make its heartbreak universal. In construction and execution it is a three-minute every-level onslaught of serotonin and “screw you!” fury that hits with the combined force of a simultaneously orchestrated tactical drone strike, shogun continental campaign, nuclear mushroom cloud, and alien intergalactic takeover.

It renders every other 2021 pop creation obsolete and anachronistic, and might lay waste to most else we hear for the rest of the decade.

And it offered a totemic moment that may be looked back on years from now as early confirmation of this young woman’s star power; standing atop a stage-left pedestal and navigating the quiet/loud build of the final bridge she had the packed-in audience positively itching to join her in screaming the defiant, accusatory “… like a damn sociopath!” that serves as the climactic, anthemic kiss off to the long-gone lover.

It’s a moment every one of them will remember. And there’s a good chance millions more who will see it on television in the years to come will hold it as up as a moment of career-making distinction.