Anyone who tells you that this year’s Glastonbury is trapped in the 1970s clearly hasn’t been to Olivia Rodrigo’s show, where the highest concentration of screaming teenage girls outside of TikTok can be found.
Warm afternoon sunlight gleaming off her knee-high DMs, mirror-mosaic piano, and purple electro-acoustic guitar, this is one of the most iridescent – and sweetest – shows of Saturday at Worthy Farm.
Although she’s best known for her grungy hit “good 4 u”, Rodrigo has a back catalogue full of ballads about heartbreak. Today her performance includes “happier”, “hope ur ok”, and a song she says is from her childhood acting career, “all i want”, She breaks out her breakthrough, “drivers license”, early on.
A surprise cover of Avril Lavigne’s 2003 grunge hit “Complicated” comes next, during which Rodrigo kicks her heels up on the piano. This alone would have been enough to leave this doe-eyed crowd charmed. But then Rodrigo announces that she’s going to bring out a special guest. At first, it sounds like the words “Billie Eilish” have left her lips. And it would make sense – the Pyramid Stage headliner played the night before. But it turns out it’s just her accent – because it’s Lily Allen who takes the stage, and sets the scene for one big festival moment.
“Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided to overturn the law permitting safe abortion,” says Rodrigo. “I’m devastated and terrified and so many women and girls are going to die because of this.
“I’m going to dedicate this song to the Supreme Court justices. I hate you.”
And with that, Allen, Rodrigo and what feels like the whole of Glastonbury sing along to Lily Allen’s 2009 hit “F*** You”, from her second album It’s Not Me, It’s You.
Allen, dressed in monochrome with a Chanel hair clip, looks a little shy, a little deliriously happy, as she duets with an exuberant Rodrigo. “deja vu” follows, and for a moment it feels as though Rodrigo’s not going to drop her biggest hit. But she belts out “good 4 u” into her purple microphone, with plenty of backing from a crowd who sound louder than ever. Yes, it might be true that Paul McCartney’s playing later – but for now the zoomers are taking the wheel.
