Olivia Rodrigo's Unraveled Tour rolled into Columbus last night for the first of two shows at Ohio State University's Value City Arena. Five quick thoughts on that: 1. This week Rolling Stone put out its list of the 200 greatest rock songs of the 21st century so far.
It's ridiculous ragebait, but they weren't wrong to rank "good 4 u" so highly. Olivia Rodrigo is a rock artist at least as much as she's a pop artist. It was apparent on her tour supporting 2023's GUTS, which vacillated wildly between the guitar-powered explosions and bleeding-heart ballads.
It's even more apparent on this tour, which follows June's you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. The setlist is a little more coherent, which is to say it mostly grouped its loud and quiet songs together into bunches. That meant the night began with eight straight high-energy numbers, most of them powered by booming drums and walls of guitar distortion, a few veering closer to the new wave vibes that factored into the new LP.
Some trappings of a pop production remained. There were several outfit changes and video interludes. The stage was covered with fake flowers.
She often sang directly into the camera. And in the night's biggest moment of pageantry, the climactic performance of "the cure" on the auxiliary stage concluded with water raining down on Rodrigo, washing one dress off her and revealing another. On the other hand, there was no choreography and no lip syncing.
It was mostly just a powerful singer and her equally powerful band rocking out. She even crawled toward her guitarist at one point, then leaned back on her knees, reveling in the six-string heroics. It feels a little old-fashioned to praise a young woman for prioritizing rock over pop, especially coming from a fortysomething dad who attended the show with his daughter, so I'm not doing that.
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