Instead of the usual guys hawking shooters out of giant coolers, there were women standing behind tables littered with sparkly gel pens. Turning a tight corner, I was nearly overrun by a horde of nine-year-olds decked out in shades of pale purple. Two mothers flanked the group, heads on a swivel. I wondered how the two chaperones had been picked—did the mothers set up a boxing ring or draw straws? The line for booze was either going to be really short or really long.
On March 20, United Center was sold out for Chicago’s second night of Olivia Rodrigo’s “GUTS World Tour,” named for her 2023 album. The pop starlet shot to fame with SOUR, her debut 2021 LP. Released when Rodrigo was 18, SOUR came from a place of first heartbreak and naivety, while GUTS suggests growth. While GUTS’s best songs are still presumably about the same breakup that featured in SOUR, the new album also tackles topics like unattainable beauty standards and social insecurity in a way that’s digestible for her young audience.
The night opened with Chappell Roan, a rising pop artist with flaming red hair and roots in the Midwest. Twirling a purse in one hand and high kicking across the stage, Chappell brought an energy that has propelled her from The Subterranean, a small, 400 capacity venue in Wicker Park, to the United Center in under a year. So for those of you who were waiting in the concession line: “How dare you miss Chappell for a hotdog,” a fellow reporter remarked in the press pit.
Rodrigo blasted onstage with “bad idea right?,” a piece about fighting the urge to hook up with her ex. She chanted along to the heavy drumbeat, “Now I’m getting in the car wrecking all my plans/ I know I should stop.” She paused a few beats longer than the audience anticipated, allowing them to fill the space with cheers. The drums picked up and she resumed, her vocals building into a scream. With “ballad of a homeschooled girl,” Rodrigo maintained the same upbeat, angry-teenage-girl energy, before shifting into the soft anger of her chart-topping “vampire.”
Then the tempo slowed. Waves of fog rolled across the stage and Rodrigo took a seat at a grand piano. After launching into a beautiful solo performance of the piece that sling-shotted her into fame, “Driver’s License,” Rodrigo addressed the audience in what The Loyola Phoenix’s Ella Govrik, standing next to me at the concert, called Rodrigo’s “first grade teacher voice.” High pitched and sing-songy, Rodrigo remarked that she was 19 when she wrote “teenage dream” and scared of growing up but having just turned 21 she now “can’t wait to get older.” Rodrigo knows her audience, and she chooses to play to her youngest fans. Her music, which often addresses body confidence and gender expectations, has messaging that is poignant and impactful for her young fans. Her delivery, however, with a kind of “teacher voice,” risks distancing her older fans.
Despite Rodrigo’s focus on her young fan base and her effort to make them feel seen and engaged, she did not filter sexual or explicit content. “Obsessed,” a track released on the March 22 deluxe version of GUTS, has lyrics like “I’m so obsessed with your ex/ I know she’s been asleep on my side of your bed.” As she sang, Rodrigo writhed on a glass portion of the stage, with the view from below cast on the massive screen behind her. Given her young audience, Rodgrigo carefully and cautiously scratched topics of sexual expression and sexual freedom—and I only hope that her choices regarding sexual content are less a product of the oversexualization of girls, and more a genuine form of female empowerment.
