Olivia Rodrigo performs during the Daisy Chain Fields Festival in Irvine, Calif., on Aug. 29.Monica Schipper/Getty Images
It was a good night for Olivias in Toronto. On Monday, Olivia Chow won her bid for re-election, crushing her right-leaning challenger Brad Bradford by more than 13 percentage points.
But ask any Toronto teen, and they’ll tell you about the far sparklier Olivia who took over the city that evening: Olivia Rodrigo, whose note-perfect performance at Scotiabank Arena was a jamboree of lovesick girlhood.
Young women arrived at the venue dressed to the nines in pink lace and sequinned hot pants. On more than one occasion, I heard a school-aged girl express excitement over being allowed to swear while singing the words to Rodrigo’s punky love songs. Sugar-sweet sodas flowed plentifully alongside fruity cocktails; high-heeled shoes clogged Scotiabank’s walkways as young feet became sore from waiting in line for T-shirts.
All to say: Monday’s crowd was overwhelmingly adolescent, female and ready to scream.
You could say the same of Rodrigo, 23, who took to her flower-covered stage in a frilly babydoll dress, long ribbons flowing from her shoulders as she sang drop dead, the lead single from her recent album You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love.
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Rodrigo’s latest record is structured much like a relationship: Its tracks outline a love story from infatuated roots (“Kiss me and I might drop dead,” she croons on the infectious opener) to an inevitably brutal breakup (“Why’d I try at all?” she later laments on cigarette smoke).
It’s a neat layout for an album, but one that doesn’t necessarily translate to a large-scale stage show. So, on the Unraveled tour, Rodrigo instead interweaves her newest songs with her back catalogue, arranging the concert into a multirecord kaleidoscope of “seasons.” With each change in the onstage weather comes a nifty visual effect to sell the story, from that eye-catching meadow of pink-and-white wildflowers to a cathartic winter rainstorm (complete with real rain).
It’s a mature, intentional setlist that allows Rodrigo to show off her full range of songwriting, from the Disney-ish ballads of 2021’s Sour to the far edgier rock anthems of You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love, whose influences span The Cure to The Cranberries.
After drop dead, Rodrigo transitioned into u + me = <3, another plucky serenade to a new lover, and so american, a playful ditty from the deluxe version of the singer’s second album Guts.
Summer came in a blaze of angry songs about insecurity and the pain of the world writ large, starting with my way, about an interloper in a fragile fling. Rodrigo then turned toward politics with serena joy, a pastiche of The Handmaid’s Tale in which the singer warns obliquely that “if they do it to them, they’re gonna do it to you.” (Cue enthusiastic headbanging.)
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By this point in Monday’s concert, the sound level in Scotiabank Arena was approaching the upper extremes of human comfort: My Apple Watch logged a high of 115 decibels during bad idea right?, Rodrigo’s tongue-in-cheek ode to an ill-advised hookup. Things got quieter – but no less passionate – during vampire and purple, two introspective songs about the symbiosis that occurs during a mismatched romance.
Fall then descended in a flurry of red confetti, the floor mostly cleared of its wildflower carpet by agile stagehands. Surrounded by dying flora, Rodrigo ratted off stupid song, maggots for brains and traitor in quick succession, occasionally taking an electric guitar to accompany herself amidst the foliage.
After a stripped-back version of begged, Rodrigo surprised fans with lacy, a new addition to the setlist, before closing the season with the oh-so-sad cigarette smoke, which saw Rodrigo stretch her voice to the upper echelons of its range, never once faltering on a high note or wail.
It’s the Unraveled tour’s winter set that’s gone the most viral on TikTok, and for good reason – the act closes with a rainy rendition of the cure, whose water effects completely melted away Rodrigo’s papery white dress to reveal a sparkly red minidress on Monday night.
The moment, executed on a small B-stage, was as thrilling for her fashion as for her voice, which continued to hold its own against an earsplitting crowd and booming band; she could have ended the concert there and no one would have felt shortchanged.
But Rodrigo kept going, returning to bright floral imagery for the most screechable songs in her canon: deja vu, all-american bitch and expectations. While Rodrigo’s own vocal health is clearly in fine shape, her Toronto audiences’ might be in trouble after Monday’s gig – the screaming during all-american bitch, in particular, seemed to shred every vocal cord in the arena. (My own included.)
Since Rodrigo’s 2022 tour to promote Sour, I’ve had my doubts about the artist’s ability to curate a setlist: Until this year, she barely had enough material to justify playing anything but her albums in full.
But with the Unraveled tour, Rodrigo has demonstrated a capacity to think deeply about how her music lands outside the studio. New live arrangements of her songs vibrate with intensity and intricate harmonies; clever long-exposure visuals make her grungiest songs look like they sound, as if experienced in a psychedelic trance.
The Unraveled setlist kills a few darlings – I was surprised not to hear get him back! or love is embarrassing, two of the centrepiece bops from Rodrigo’s last tour – but the concert ultimately emerges far greater than the sum of its songs.
On Monday night, two Olivias demonstrated that they’re blooming anew – one as a freshly sophisticated artist, one as a mayor at the start of her next term. But more importantly, both Olivias gave Toronto’s youngest women something to look up to: a decisive electoral victory, and a blossomy concert tour worthy of the rock gods who inspired it.