Olivia Rodrigo Brings Down the Opry House

Tuesday night, my wife and I made our way through the line to get into the Grand Ole Opry House, which stretched from the venue’s doors out to the parking lot and to the edge of Briley Parkway. As we reached the entrance, a thought struck me: Olivia Rodrigo is only a couple years older than the teenager we’d just left with our kids. This somewhat distressing realization led to two more. First: “Lol, we’re old.” And second: The 19-year-old former High School Musical: The Musical: The Series star has become a global pop sensation — even before she can drink, to borrow a phrase from “brutal,” the opener of her debut album Sour. 

The Olivia aesthetic was in full bloom at the home of country music, and the ’90s vibes radiating off the crowd made it feel appropriate that we were right next to a massive shopping mall. Some parents dropped off their teens in the parking lot, while others joined them in the serpentine line of youth. Did I mention we’re old? 

Inside, opener Holly Humberstone was already performing for a crowd that didn’t need much warming up. As the Opry House filled up, it became evident that many in attendance either already knew the British synth-pop singer-songwriter or had done their homework. Her single “Falling Asleep at the Wheel” had the Sour Tour merch-clad masses singing along.

After a brief intermission, the Opry lights went down and One Direction’s “Olivia” started blaring. The crowd — how else to put it? — lost their damn minds. Even if you have resisted Rodrigo’s dominance of pop music over the past year — and I have not — I would defy you to not give in to the energy of several thousand of her fans realizing that she is about to walk onstage. There were, without a doubt, people in that room as excited as I have ever been about anything. And good for them. They were about to have a great time. 

After her band teased the crowd with the song’s pop-punk opening riff, Rodrigo took the stage — which was giving major high school prom energy, adorned with shimmery streamers and bleachers — singing the aforementioned “brutal,” followed quickly by “jealousy, jealousy,” her lament about the ill effects of our Instagram-centering culture. After that, Rodrigo took a seat at the piano and played the opening notes of “drivers license,” the song that turned her from a talented young Disney star to an absolute juggernaut in platform boots. Upon its release in January 2021, “drivers license” — the opening lyrics of which are yet another reminder of how young she is and how old we are — topped the charts, trended on TikTok, appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch and was inescapable on the radio. I can report that enthusiasm for the tune has not diminished. 

Perhaps strategically, Rodrigo is playing theaters on the Sour Tour when she could presumably be filling arenas. It is her first tour, after all, and it’s better to have lots of people wishing they could get into a show than risk any empty seats. But also, while pandemic time-warping may make it seem as if she’s been around forever, she is still essentially brand-new, with one album to her name. She simply doesn’t have enough songs yet for the kind of set that fills a bigger venue. In part, one assumes, this is why her 14-song set on Tuesday included two covers, the first of which was Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” — an old standard to this Gen Z crowd. She performed it well, but her own songs are better. Later, she paid tribute to yet another plaid-clad frontwoman with a cover of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl.” 

It’s easy to see the influence of those artists on Rodrigo. In her, one can see a kind of sugary amalgam of Taylor Swift and Hayley Williams’ Paramore with a dash of Phoebe Bridgers — indeed, Rodrigo ended up giving millions of dollars in royalties to the first two because of the undeniable similarity between some of her songs and theirs. But it’s easy to imagine Rodrigo having her own long career, not because of those similarities but because of her own clear talent as a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter and performer. From the way she commanded the Opry stage, you’d never have known it was her first time. 

The middle of her set included an acoustic medley of tunes “enough for you” and “1 step forward, 3 steps back,” and a call back to her High School Musical days with the song she wrote for the show, “All I Want.” I was not familiar with this particular number, but the crowd definitely was. To say they were singing along throughout would not be true: They were absolutely screaming along throughout. That was nothing compared to what was to come, though, when Rodrigo closed the set with the scorned-lover smash hits “traitor,” “deja vu” and “good 4 u.” Absolute bangers, folks — there’s no better way to say it. 

At one point, Rodrigo came to the front of the stage and collected several Nashville stickers to add to her collection from other tour stops. She told the crowd it was her first time in town, that she loved it here and that she got to meet one of her heroes, Jack White. She’ll be back, but next time the room and the crowd will be even bigger.