Judging by the response to the pre-gig soundtrack for the London debut of Olivia Rodrigo - one-time Disney star turned spokeswoman for Gen Z angst - the much-touted teenage grunge revival has been vastly overestimated. A track by Harry Styles took the Hammersmith Apollo roof off, one by Courtney Love’s abrasive alternative rock band Hole left the audience cold.
Yet the crashing power-chords opening Brutal, delivered by an all-girl punk pop backing band, sent this hyped-up teen audience into screaming paroxysms. And Rodrigo emerged every inch the tortured idol; a pristine pop queen in a frilly white skirt, on her knees howling about jealousy, anger, insecurity and obsession, demanding, “Where’s my f***ing teenage dream?” Bawling along to every word, the pop crowd was clearly up for a touch of the hard stuff, if it spoke their anguished language.
Interpolating both Taylor Swift and Paramore into last year’s debut album Sour offered clues to the sonic mindset that has made Rodrigo an international chart-topper and Spotify record breaker: she’s pop, but pissed off. This hour-long show, feeling surprisingly unpadded for an artist with one 35-minute album to her name, provided plenty more. The glittery strip curtain backdrop was pure showbiz pizzazz but the risers, smattered with stickers from each city on the tour, resembled a Barfly toilet wall. A cover of Avril Lavigne’s Complicated confessed her blueprint; a surprise duet with Natalie Imbruglia on Torn passed a baton.
Rodrigo’s music, however, cut far deeper than such trite forebears ever managed. Jealousy, Jealousy, for instance, was a piercing, and terrifyingly relevant, dissection of the inadequacies left behind by the bombardment of social media life-brags. And as she took to a grand piano for her breakthrough viral hit Drivers License (“about my first heartbreak that changed my life forever”) and the set shifted from power pop to highly charged billow ballad, the bitter agonies of watching an ex move on were powerfully sketched.
“Find someone great but don’t find no-one better/I hope you’re happy but don’t be happier,” she wailed on ballroom showstopper Happier, while gaslighting anthem Traitor skewered an ex-boyfriend dating someone else within two weeks. As 5,000 voices bellowed back Rodrigo’s pangs of betrayal and flowers arced onto the stage, no amount of “We were on a break” would have cut it.
“I wrote these next songs about feeling like I wasn’t good enough for the guy I was dating at the time,” she told the crowd as the stage curtain closed behind her, leaving her alone out front for an acoustic segment that proved she is as adept at alt-folk as alt-pop, “has anybody else felt like that?” More than a preliminary lesson in alt-rock, Rodrigo provided mass catharsis, and a supportive hand, for a fanbase picking its way through the swamp of formative romance. Grunge might not be resurrected just yet but, on this evidence, its snarling sentiment is alive and kicking back.
