The Olivia Rodgrigo GUTS tour is officially on the road and came to town Friday, March 15. This was the thirteenth stop on her seventy seven show tour across North America, adding twenty eight more shows than her previous tour, SOUR. When SOUR came to Minneapolis previously, she played at The Armory. However, when GUTS came to town this year she played at the XCEL Energy Center. This jump included playing for an additional twelve thousand people. This achievement is due to the publicity that she has got in recent years through social media, most crucially TikTok. It was there that people would use her music to recreate moments and to parody many aspects of people’s life.
The actual concert was broken up into three acts. The first act set up the audience’s expectations by opening with her hit song, “bad idea right?” followed by, “ballad of a homeschooled girl,” and “vampire.” Then, the show deviates from the GUTS album for a brief moment to play “traitor,” “drivers license,” and “teenage dream,” from SOUR. The second act then commences with some of her more acoustic tunes starting it up with “pretty isn’t pretty,” then going to “love is embarrassing,” which went viral for the choreography incorporating what many people call “Disney knees.” This is when a person looks like someone who belongs at Camp Rock in the 2000s. She does this to parody the song by acting like she used to for the Disney Channel that is now considered embarrassing. She then goes on to play “making the bed”, “logical”, “enough for you”, and “lacy”. She afterwards goes on to play her newest hit single from the new Hunger Games movie “Can’t Catch Me Now”. Next, she transitions into her SOUR album again with “jealousy, jealousy” “happier”, “favorite crime”, “deja vu”, and “the grudge”. For her final act she closed out the night with “brutal”, “obsessed”, and “all-american ****h”. Though it changes depending on the show, she generally plays an encore of two of her most popular songs “good for you” and “get him back!”.
This concert was a show stopper if you are interested in teen pop music. Every set was beautifully designed and the pops of red to show maturity were interesting and captivating. Another great feature was the rotating moon around the stadium. The moon design was a very smart choice as it allowed for her to see fans in the back that otherwise get lost in the crowd. The opener, Chappel Roan, was a great attention grabbing performer who really got the crowd riled up to see Rodrigo, and it seemed like many people knew her songs. Having said that, there was something that could have been improved upon and that was the dancing. Now contrary to comments online, the dancing during “love is embarrassing” actually made sense because the dancers were meant to act embarrassed which is the overall theme of the song. However it seemed that this embarrassing dancing continued throughout the program with songs that should have been slower which threw some people off. The dancers themselves seemed proficient in their craft however the choreography made them look unskillful, clumsy, and awkward. Besides that the concert was truly worth the excitement and now all that is left is to wait for her next great career pursuit.
