In recent days, a search for “Olivia Rodrigo” will almost certainly flood your screen with unreserved, lavish, and utmost gushing praise from all corners of the internet, be it a random tweet from a concertgoer on X or the discerning Pitchfork itself. Yet, those reviews are no longer simply judgements of one of today’s most popular artists: they are the definitive proof of her journey and immense breakthrough in the pop industry. From her songwriting genius at eighteen to the Recording Academy describing her as “one of the defining voices of her generation,” to the latest release of her phenomenal third album “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” she has been breaking records left and right.
Her 2026 “Unraveled Tour” has only further proved her success.
Olivia Rodrigo’s “Unraveled Tour” stopped in Philadelphia last Saturday and Sunday. The weather showed no sign of a storm, but inside the Xfinity Mobile Arena, there was a whirlwind of dancing and singing all weekend long. The much-awaited tour follows Rodrigo’s latest and (in my opinion) best album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love.” Like the album, the concerts are built around the tragic arc of a love that blooms in spring and withers in winter, before hope returns with the new season. The arena was transformed into a magical land the moment Rodrigo opened the concert with the album’s lead single “drop dead,” the stage covered with flowers around her.
Even though I was not in a bar, glancing over at a pretty boy standing in the corner, the feminine intuition inside me was just as alert about the possibility of me “dropping dead” at the end of the concert — after all, someone just as beautiful as an “angel on the walls of Versailles” was right in front of me, vocalizing beautiful notes that so easily reached deep into my heart and elevated my entire being to the ethereal land.
I was exhilarated; I was already “a car speeding down the boulevard without a brake,” but I came even more alive when Rodrigo decided that night was the night to channel her rocker spirit and her inner “The Cure” fangirl. She sang her heart out to “what’s wrong with me,” Rodrigo’s first ever duet, which features Robert Smith of The Cure. Rodrigo performed the song as a surprise song, as it has been inexplicably left off the set list for most of the tour! The crimson glow of the lights that engulfed the stage stood in striking contrast to the sea of pink from the audiences’ wristbands surrounding it, creating an almost surreal visual as Rodrigo poured her heart into every note.
Miss “scared of her guitar” was genuinely trying to scare me off with her guitar too, not only with “what’s wrong with me” but with “maggots for brains” that followed up afterwards, with its almost haunting refrain:
“What can I do / But think of you? / But think of you? (What can I do?) / But think of you? (What can I do)”
As the entire arena chanted the lyrics along with Rodrigo, I found myself singing with them without giving the words much thought. Little did I know that, post-concert, those lyrics would become an entirely different kind of haunting. Because now, with the concert long over and the echoes of that night slowly fading away, all I seem to be able to do is exactly what the entire crowd was singing about: think of the concert, think of the concert, and think of it some more.
And speaking of The Cure, I could hardly leave out mention of Rodrigo’s song, which shares its name with Smith’s band. If “what’s wrong with me” had already sent me spiraling, “whe cure” was certainly pulling me down further the road of anguish. There is something particularly cruel about singing along to a song that puts all the overwhelming insecurities constantly plaguing your mind into words, especially when you find yourself relating to every single lyric. Perhaps Rodrigo did intend to leave us all emotionally devastated that night, because I was certainly not leaving the arena any less heartbroken than when I walked in.
As she repeated, “Cause baby, I’m unraveled, I’m unraveled, I’m unraveled,” rain began pouring down onto the B-stage where she performed, gradually soaking through her white babydoll dress and dissolving it before our very eyes until all that remained was the striking red latex bodysuit underneath. The visual was mesmerizing, as though the stage production itself was showcasing the emotional unraveling Rodrigo had gone through in the process of writing the song.
The second night she performed in Philadelphia, my two worlds collided. Rodrigo sang “Can’t Catch Me Now” — her song from the “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” soundtrack — as the surprise song. The last time Rodrigo performed the song live was in Charlotte, North Carolina in early October. Philly was indeed lucky with their surprise songs, as neither have been performed in a long time!
From the haunting melodies of Panem to the haze of “cigarette smoke,” Rodrigo once again transported us into another world. Since the tour began, the album closer “cigarette smoke” has climbed from one of the least-streamed songs on the album to dominating the Apple Music chart for days. The success, in my eyes, is so well deserved, especially given the astonishing live performance I experienced that completely unraveled me for days to come. With fingers meticulously gliding over the frets of her electric guitar and anguished words echoing throughout the arena in unison, Rodrigo’s vocals intertwined with the guitar riffs in a crescendo of raw emotion, sweeping the entire arena into a fever dream. Lost in the soaring high notes, I found myself utterly shattered as the heartache flooded over me, yet paradoxically, more healed than ever as I screamed my lungs out alongside the thousands of voices surrounding me, finding an almost inexplicable comfort in collectively singing through all that pain.
Devastated, I still could not stop myself from wistfully longing for that season of love, experiencing it all over again. It was not a lie when Rolling Stone titled their article with the claim that Olivia Rodrigo healed wounds and drew blood all at the same time on her tour. It was the most beautiful contradiction that I fortunately got to experience myself.
