They Say These Are The Golden Years

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, alight before they even got in the door – no folded arms, no critical detachment, just seemingly endless energy and optimism. They were here to live that shit.

And live that shit they did. From the first tease of the power chords to Brutal (delivered from behind the stage curtain and then repeatedly and abruptly stopped, revving the crowd like an engine), the noise levels in the room surged roofwards, and never really came down. When the curtains eventually parted to reveal Rodrigo and band, something approaching actual delirium erupted – frenzied cheers, and then quite possibly the single loudest singalong I’ve ever heard in a venue of that size. Every single golden word of the lyric screamed back at the stage by a crowd who had clearly pre-consumed these materials as a sort of personal gospel. I’ve been to quite a bit of live music down the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything quite like it: several thousand people, at the absolute top of their lungs, screaming “I’m so sick of 17/where’s my fucking teenage dream”. Moreover, the collective voice recognisably female. See video below (not mine, I should add).

That opener set the trend for the rest of the evening. Rodrigo played Sour, and an increasingly excited room sang every single word of it right back at her, even the acoustic numbers. They did not tire, they did not falter. At times, she left whole verses in the capable hands of the collective, knowing they were drowning her out anyway. The whole thing had something of the feel of a school assembly that had got badly out of hand. In fact, the only track of the night that seemed to land with anything less than near lethal force was a cover version of Republica’s Ready to Go, a track to my mind best left in the 90s, and probably met with utter confusion by this crowd. New material, perhaps?

Slightly incredibly, Drivers License (actual world-eating, record-shattering Drivers License!) was dispensed with three tracks in, via a trip to the grand piano and something approaching bedlam during the bridge (and – let’s be honest – that bridge is what really puts the song over the top as a total classic).

By this stage it was fairly clear to all that Rodrigo, perhaps not unexpectedly given her Disney background, had this audience in the palm of her hand. I watched on as she exchanged seemingly improvised banter with the front row, interacted with her musicians, plucked a glittery pink Stetson from the crowd and wore it for an entire song, etc, and I got this nagging feeling of familiarity. Not just about her, but about the entire gig. Eventually I realised what it all reminded me of, as a live experience; Bruce Springsteen. The proficiency of the showmanship, the super earnest, “just go along with it anyway” lyrics, the seemingly off the cuff (but clearly carefully rehearsed) moments of spontaneity, the crowd that knows – and believes it has lived – every word, the brief respite so the artist can change into a silver sequinned mini-dress, etc, etc. This was the Springsteen experience, in all its merciless showpersonship, repackaged for a different demographic and being played out in a far smaller venue than The Boss will have seen for decades. When someone is giving you between track chat about how they “wrote this next song in my bedroom”, before plunging into a track about cars and lost love, it’s always a dead giveaway. So then – a Springsteen gig with a Take That audience; a concept so strong it’s amazing no one has tried it before now.

I cannot tell you how the show lasted an hour and a quarter. It seemed much, much quicker than that, and saw a grand total of 14 songs being played; the entirety of Sour, a pre-Sour Disney number of a similar stripe, and covers of Avril Lavigne’s Complicated (still a tune) and the aforementioned Ready to Go. It didn’t feel like there was any real padding, and the whole thing was so ruthlessly professional that there certainly wasn’t much fucking about. Most of it, she played straight (barring a rocked up version of Jealousy, Jealousy), and the band were undeniably tight.

Shortly before the end, we got what I’d personally been waiting for – an absolutely stellar performance of Traitor. Now, I think Sour is a brilliant record all round; very little filler, lots of memorable lyrics and a series of vocal performances that completely sell every single song. But Traitor is still the standout; the way it takes the sexual politics of the playground and blows them up to ludicrously epic levels, the flawless arrangement, the shameless, “look at what you’ve done to me” finger pointiness, the sheer brilliance of writing a song called Traitor to directly accuse someone of being a traitor, and – most of all – the phenomenal, transcendent bridge (again, the bridge) leading to that massive “you’re just a traitor-aaaaah-aaaaaaah” that seems driven up into and beyond the heavens.

Performed live, the song lost a little of its lushness in the arrangement, but that was compensated for by the sound of several thousand voices joining in to support Rodrigo’s skewering of her former paramour. Magical stuff.

The show closed, as expected, with a rapturously received Good 4 U – 1.5 billion Spotify streams and counting, clearly the people’s champ here, We departed on a surge of adrenaline, with ringing ears and contemplating a gig experience that was simultaneously familiar and utterly alien. There’s so much to be said for music that is simply making people happy and/or allowing them to vent, without any real affectation – the end result was hordes of smiling punters pouring out into Hammersmith Underground Station, embracing and chanting snippets of the songs. Songs that are, at heart, about being young and feeling it all for the first time and believing that – yes, honestly – you’re the first one it’s ever happened to, and that it all matters desperately, because that sensation is youth in essence.

Bit of a mad experience all round, not quite like any other gig I’ve been to. Obviously, I’m not the main target demo for this music, but then that was true when it was going to see Dylan in my 20s – it’s only really a thing if you decide to make it one. Would I recommend it? Yeah, I would – these songs are brilliant, she can sing like a motherfucker and it’s impossible to avoid being swept along by the enthusiasm of the crowd. Obviously, if you’re looking for silent appreciation of the work, this probably isn’t the one for you, but I think there’s a place for howling devotion and communal outpourings of emotion.

I’ll be really interested to see what she comes up with next. The songwriting on Sour is crazy strong – half those tracks are like generational touchstones already. I’ll be amazed if she can repeat the trick, especially now that we’ve seen it once before. And it is, lest we forget, brutal out there….

BL

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