Of all the highlights of Olivia Rodrigo’s first two years as a pop star – breaking streaming records with her heartbroken debut single Drivers License aged 17; helping President Biden encourage young people to get vaccinated; winning three Grammys after she released her debut album, Sour – her set at Glastonbury 2022 still stands out. Rodrigo already had big plans for her Saturday afternoon performance: she asked Lily Allen if they could duet on her favourite song by the British pop star, her 2009 hit Fuck You. Then the day before Rodrigo was due to play, Roe v Wade was overturned, removing the federal right to abortion in the US. She was in London. “We were all like, we should stay here,” Rodrigo, 20, says when we meet in August in Pasadena, the LA-adjacent city where she lived as a teenager. “We were so devastated, crying because it felt so surreal and so awful.” Then Allen texted her. “She goes, ‘See the news? I guess we know who we’re gonna dedicate this song to.’”
Allen recalls Rodrigo pacing backstage, memorising her speech. On stage, Rodrigo said: “I’m devastated and terrified, and so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this,” then dedicated Fuck You to “the five members of the supreme court who have shown us that, at the end of the day, they truly don’t give a shit about freedom”, listing them by name. “We hate you,” Rodrigo said, then danced around with Allen, middle fingers flipped. It was perfect, meeting incomprehensible injustice with petulant anger. That’s what music’s for, says Rodrigo, “expressing your rage and dissatisfaction”.
