Olivia Rodrigo, Turning 24, And the Art Of Getting Older
So, here’s the breakdown–I spent my birthday at an Olivia Rodrigo concert on Friday.
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On Friday, I finally turned a new page after a challenging year that really had me at my wits’ end–I turned 24. To celebrate my birthday, a close friend and I braved the heat of California August for a show at the Forum–none other than Olivia Rodrigo’s “GUTS” world tour in her home city.
As we made our way through a sea of glittery ensembles of black and purple, I was struck by how special it felt to finally get to see Rodrigo perform (and she really did, as her merch suggests, “spill her guts,”). When I was 20 years old and not much younger than Rodrigo herself, I made my professional music journalism debut in the Boston Globe. I was a junior in college and a professor graciously extended the opportunity to pitch her some ideas, and to my surprise, she loved my pitch to cover Rodrigo’s debut “Sour” and the rise of female empowering breakup anthems.
The article was splashed on a nearly full page spread in the paper of record across the city, and for this reason, Rodrigo’s music will always hold an important place in my career and my personal life. After braving Ticketmastergate for “GUTS” tickets, it felt surreal to see the artist who played such an important role in my early career perform in person, and to have grown so much since her debut.
Complete with striking visuals that harken back to the pop punk and alternative rock of other women musicians of the 1990s and her added signature moon and stars motifs, Rodrigo’s set was visually captivating, and her live vocals packed the gut punches of her sharp writing even better than the studio recordings.
Just before playing her “GUTS” album closer “teenage dream”, Rodrigo spoke on its meaning. As she sat at the piano, childhood home videos played on screen behind her. She explained that she wrote the song days before her nineteenth birthday, and was “terrified of growing up,” but that after turning 21, she was no longer scared of getting older, and was “actually really excited.”
This moment, in which the packed house of screaming fans silenced to listen, felt especially poignant to hear on my own 24th birthday. In the three years since I first wrote about Rodrigo’s music, I made new friends, strengthened my lasting relationships, worked internships in entertainment, graduated college, and moved across the country.
Despite my 23rd year being full of challenges (from an immense cross country move to layoffs, many earthquakes and a hurricane, as the saying goes, it really does feel like the world doesn’t like you when you’re 23), I still feel optimistic about embarking on my mid 20s, instead choosing to look at the open possibilities rather than thinking about what could possibly go wrong.
After a beautiful softer ballad set sung from a moon shaped stage suspended in the air, Rodrigo returned to the main stage to fully rock out and exercise her vocal prowess. Here, she emerged in tights, Doc Martens’ boots, and glittery shorts, strumming an electric guitar complete with plenty of hairography with her signature long locks.
Rodrigo’s most rock influenced songs in this portion of the set were “brutal” “good 4 u” “ballad of a homeschooled girl” and “all american bitch.” The songs perfectly illustrated the complex feelings of womanhood–of feeling the weight of the barriers to one’s success, the awkward transition years between childhood and adulthood, and finally coming to the conclusion that you “know your place” and “this is it.” Maybe, just maybe, amid all the uncertainty in our 20s, this is the place where we are all meant to be at this time of our lives, surrounded by the music that gives us the power to face it.