Throughout Olivia Rodrigo’s Glastonbury debut, she repeatedly comes back to what quickly becomes a funny trope. “I wrote this song in my living room,” she tells us twice; another song, she wrote in her bedroom. The Drivers License singer seems at pains to stress the intimate, homespun craft of her songs – but it’s in the raucously communal moments that her set really comes alive, particularly as the cameras catch small girls roaring along on their parents’ shoulders among the absolutely gigantic crowd at the Other stage.
Having watched videos of her live before, I worried that it might be a bit stagey – her Disney past sometimes makes her songs about teenage angst feel a little like a performance, a touch polished. But from the opening salvo of Brutal, played with a pile-driver of a riff, and Jealousy, Jealousy, the sheen comes off to thrilling effect. Rodrigo sings with a knowing melodrama about her teenage heartbreak, and her evident delight at being here really yanks her into the moment. It’s rare, too, that a pop-leaning act actually benefits from having a proper live band – all women, incidentally, who look straight out of Disney central casting for a film about some plucky young punks – and they lean into Rodrigo’s resonance with the current pop-punk revival, at least at first.
