Review: Olivia Rodrigo, now 21, was confident, gracious at sold-out New Orleans concert (2024)

Olivia Rodrigo has cited Taylor Swift as a primary inspiration and influence. It shows.

Barely 21, Rodrigo, like Swift, has given voice to a generation of girls and young women navigating transitional years, first loves and losses. Though Rodrigo packs more punk-pop energy, Swift-ian nuances abound, from her songs' subject matter to arrangements to vocal inflections.

Early in her Saturday night show at a sold-out Smoothie King Center, Rodrigo even paused for a brief, Swift-like stare into the distance.

None of which is meant to diminish what she has achieved in such a short time. Rodrigo got her showbiz start as a teen actor on Disney TV shows. She released her first album, “Sour,” in 2021. Her second, “Guts,” came out last year.

Only two albums into her recording career, she’s already forged a Swift-like sisterhood with a fan base that skews heavily female and not old enough to rent a car. As the high-pitched singalongs and screams at the Smoothie King Center made clear, Rodrigo strengthened those bonds while onstage.

The Guts World Tour is her second tour, but she’s already filling arenas. The tour’s spring North American leg concludes with four nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden. If her career trajectory follows its current course, she’ll be headlining stadiums next time around.

The sold-out New Orleans date was the sixth of a planned 77 concerts on the Guts tour itinerary. So the kinks have been worked out, yet she’s still fresh and full of energy.

For the entire, tightly packed 90 minutes, she struck just the right balance between confidence and gratitude, charisma and relatability, bombast and beauty, power chords and power ballads.

Appearing in a sparkly silver bikini top, matching skirt, fishnet stockings and black combat boots, she jumped right in with the one-two punch of “Bad Idea Right?” and “Ballad of a Home Schooled Girl.”

The band behind her — two guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, two backing vocalists — replicated the contemporary sheen of Rodrigo’s recordings. A troupe of eight dancers came and went with their muscular, almost militaristic choreography.

“I want to see all of you up out of your seats!” Rodrigo enthused, directly contrasting Eagles drummer Don Henley’s directive in the same venue two weeks ago to “sit the f*** down.”

Fans obliged Rodrigo’s request even as back-to-back ballads “Vampire” and “Traitor” signaled the first of many downshifts in tempo. She took a turn at the piano for “Drivers License.” “Sing it!” she enthused to fans who were already doing just that. More than 14,000 unamplified voices nearly overtopped Rodrigo’s.

She wrote “Teenage Dream” — not to be confused with the Katy Perry hit of the same name — soon after turning 19, when “growing up was the scariest thing in the world.”

Two years later, she “feels happier than I have ever felt in my life.” The age-appropriate lesson for her young fans — it gets better — was accompanied by home movies of a kindergarten-aged Rodrigo exhibiting early star potential.

“Love Is Embarrassing” was an aerobic exercise of a rock song. For “Logical,” she boarded a crescent moon suspended from a track mounted in the rafters and rode it, slowly, to the back of the arena. From her perch above the crowd, she pointed and waved at individual fans.

Another ballad, “Enough For You,” got her back to the main stage. With the lights up after “Lacy,” she surveyed the crowd and spotted a girl celebrating a 16th birthday. “Sweet 16, that’s so cute!” Rodrigo gushed, only five years removed from that milestone herself.

A prominent bass line ushered in the hearty kick of “Jealousy Jealousy.” She recounted telling the director of a TV scene she was shooting that she had to pee, only to scurry off and tap the genesis of “Happier” into her phone. She and one of her guitarists delivered an acoustic campfire-style “Happier” while sitting at a corner of the stage.

The acoustic duet continued for “Favorite Crime,” which showcased some of Rodrigo’s most nuanced vocals of the night. In “Déjà vu,” she flashed shades of Edie Brickell.

Rodrigo delivered “The Grudge” standing perfectly straight and still at center stage. In the style of Taylor Swift, the song’s narrator tries to process being dumped: “Trust that you betrayed, confusion that still lingers/Took everything I loved and crushed it in between your fingers.” Rodrigo conveyed all the vulnerability in the narrative, along with the search for enough strength to move on.

She was all strength in the subsequent “Brutal,” stomping and pogoing up and down. During “Obsessed,” she writhed on a clear section of the stage while a camera shot her from below. She dropped an occasional f-bomb, and maybe a couple, in the set-closing “All American Bitch.”

The energy stayed up for the encore of “Good 4 U,” with its driving chorus, and the final “Get Him Back!,” in which she again debates how to best respond to a breakup.

After her bandmates disappeared, Rodrigo came down from the stage and worked her way along the perimeter of the barricades, pressing the flesh with fans, posing for a quick selfie, signing a shoe and repeating “thank you for coming.”

A gracious young star, all the way to the end.