Last week I had the good fortune of attending the final night of Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour Tour, at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith. I know there are a few fellow fans on here, so I thought it would be worth a quick write up.

Obviously, Sour was one of the better albums of 2021. 11 tracks and a little under 35 minutes of the precocious Rodrigo tearing her ex boyfriend a new one over a series of pop punk and piano-lead indie tracks, with a sprinkling of songwriting genius and a touching refusal to accept when it was time to stop kicking because the corpse was long since cold. An absolute torrent of rage and accusation, all delivered with a smile. God only knows what it must feel like to be the person who inspired it.

So – first up, the audience. 90%+ female, absolutely crackling with expectation and bedecked with merch way before the show even began. I’ve said before on these pages that, for all the lengthy, obsessive “pieces” and poring over rock minutiae we see on the Afterword, probably no cohort actually “feels” music like teenage girls. This event rather confirmed that notion; they were, quite simply, » Continue Reading.