Throughout Olivia Rodrigo’s Glastonbury debut, she repeatedly comes again to what rapidly turns into a humorous trope. “I wrote this music in my front room,” she tells us twice; one other music, she wrote in her bed room. The Drivers License singer appears at pains to emphasize the intimate, homespun craft of her songs – nevertheless it’s within the raucously communal moments that her set actually comes alive, significantly because the cameras catch small women roaring alongside on their dad and mom’ shoulders among the many completely gigantic crowd on the Different stage.
Having watched movies of her reside earlier than, I anxious that it could be a bit stagey – her Disney previous typically makes her songs about teenage angst really feel somewhat like a efficiency, a contact polished. However from the opening salvo of Brutal, performed with a pile-driver of a riff, and Jealousy, Jealousy, the sheen comes off to thrilling impact. Rodrigo sings with a figuring out melodrama about her teenage heartbreak, and her evident delight at being right here actually yanks her into the second. It’s uncommon, too, that a pop-leaning act really advantages from having a correct reside band – all girls, by the way, who look straight out of Disney central casting for a movie about some plucky younger punks – they usually lean into Rodrigo’s resonance with the present pop-punk revival, at the very least at first.
To her credit score, she will get her breakthrough hit out of the best way simply three songs in, sitting at her glittery piano for a rendition of the mega ballad Drivers License. Her efficiency stings with bitterness for the cad who broke her coronary heart, and she or he actually loses herself within the center eight. As she performs the ultimate piano notes, the group yell an impromptu ultimate run by means of the refrain, and she or he seems to be really overjoyed.
The vibes keep excessive as she covers Avril Lavigne’s Difficult: that shruggy opening guitar notice strikes a chord of nostalgia within the coronary heart of each millennial current, till you realise that Rodrigo was born 11 months after Difficult initially got here out, and the concern of mortality (already fairly robust after two nights on the farm) strikes arduous. When it comes to her youth, at the very least, her late-afternoon set harks again to Billie Eilish’s Glastonbury debut on this stage in 2019, when – fairly crushingly! – Eilish expressed her unhappiness that she would by no means have the ability to expertise the pageant as a punter. So it’s beautiful to listen to that Rodrigo was right here yesterday, strolling round and watching totally different acts. (I’d like to know what her disguise was.)
After that, although, her set will get somewhat boggy for some time, dwelling on the mildly overwrought songs from her debut album, Bitter. Hope Ur OK is sappy, and overladen with “indie voice” (that barely pinched, cloying tone that appeared to start out with Bombay Bicycle Membership then unfold like a plague). Happier goes for full-crowd sway-along vitality and doesn’t fairly get there; I’m unsure that most individuals right here wish to hear All I Need, which she wrote for the Excessive Faculty Musical TV present she stars in.
All of it will get a bit depressingly Dawson’s Creek – till she brings on a particular visitor, Lily Allen. To start with, it’s pleasant to know that a 19-year-old US songwriter even is aware of who Allen is. But it surely will get higher. “I’m devastated and terrified,” Rodrigo says. “So many ladies and so many ladies are going to die due to this. I wished to dedicate this subsequent music to the 5 members of the supreme court docket who've confirmed us that on the finish of the day, they honestly don’t give a shit about freedom. The music is for the justices: Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh. We hate you! We hate you.”
After which, gloriously, they play Allen’s seethingly sardonic 2009 hit Fuck You. It’s messy in the absolute best means, their harmonies not completely in time, and overflowing with feeling. It’s arduous to know which one in every of them seems to be extra delighted, Allen dancing round flipping the chook, and Rodrigo completely beside herself, wagging her finger, as Allen sings “nobody desires your opinion”. I beloved Eilish’s headline set yesterday, however arguably it missed a distinctively particular Glastonbury second: Rodrigo’s rendition of Fuck You is exactly the kind of fantastically properly judged alternative – sweary, lairy, ever so barely area of interest – that basically will get a crowd of Brits on aspect.
It’s humorous then to listen to her introduce Deja Vu with a well-rehearsed little bit of stage patter. “I simply wished to ask you guys a query,” Rodrigo says. “Does anybody right here ever get deja vu?!” She sings it with a sure figuring out, though it nonetheless underlines the dissonance between her extra spontaneous and rehearsed moments. The latter, you watched, is a wonderfully comprehensible aspect impact of being a very younger performer who blew up within the pandemic and doesn’t have an enormous quantity of reside expertise but. However you hope that such a expertise – the hundreds current screaming “what the fuck! is up! with that!” throughout nearer Good 4 U – helps her go away the protected harbour of familiarity and (within the phrases of Avril Lavigne) actually let go.
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