Olivia Rodrigo Wows the ‘Sour’ Faithful With Triumphant Radio City Show: Concert Review

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorFrom the Beatles to the Backstreet Boys to Billie and BTS and beyond, the teen-centric pop concert is both timeless and definitively contemporary, from the screaming and sing-along/shout-alongs to the masses of similarly dressed fans — looking almost military in matching merch — to the indulging attendant parents and, these days, the selfies and social overload.

And it was the latter, along with the overwhelmingly pre-drinking age audience, that made Olivia Rodrigo’s concert at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on Wednesday the most definitively 2020s teen-centric concert of all: a near-total, two-hour-long wi-fi blackout in the venue so extensive that Russia could have launched a cyber attack and most of the crowd would have assumed it was simply due to thousands of kids posting selfies and video.

But for all the teen-leaning concerts we’ve attended in the past few years — Harry Styles, Ariana Grande, Jack Harlow, Dua Lipa, Eilish, BTS and more — Rodrigo’s was the most laser-focused on speaking to and for her audience and age group.

For all of their differences in sound and imaging, it was most similar to Eilish circa 2019, which isn’t surprising: both are (or were) teenagers themselves.But whereas Eilish’s appeal at the time was more like the cool, creative friend from art class, Rodrigo’s is a more situational relatability: “I wrote this song in my bedroom when I was feeling like I was falling short for this guy I really liked” was her spoken introduction to just one song, but could have been for many.