I believe in the church of pop music.
The congregation of an arena crowd, the ceremony of call and response, the big sing-along of radio-hit scripture. I believe in simple wisdom so perfectly produced that it reaches the spiritual, and I believe in the solace of formula, which is just another word for tradition.
In other words, I believe in Olivia Rodrigo, and in the transcendence of her GUTS tour at the Chase Center in San Francisco on Friday night. And I especially endorse Olivia Rodrigo’s reformist sect within the church of pop music, which preaches that teenage girls deserve redemption too.
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A more agnostic reviewer might tell you facts: that for nearly two hours, the “21-year-old phenomenon” Rodrigo “captivated the crowd” with her “energetic stage presence.” I can’t do that, though, because this was not even a concert, really. It was a ritual, led by the power of a three-minute pop song to finally put into words what millions of young girls haven’t found the exact language for.
That much was evident in the arena’s attendees, a sea of teens and pre-teens in lavender and sequin, screaming along at deafening volume to Rodrigo’s opening song, “bad idea right?” This joyful noise somehow grew even louder for “ballad of a homeschooled girl.” Next came “vampire,” which showed Rodrigo’s talent for embodying a delicate song as first-person narrator while simultaneously inviting an ear-piercing 20,000-piece amateur choir into her personal world.
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We live in an age where finally, women regularly occupy the majority of the top positions on the Billboard charts. Rodrigo is special, though; it’s almost scary how precise she is in singing about the emotions of adolescence, and isolating small aspects of a relationship to explore them at length.