On one of the sweatiest nights of the summer, the heat did not stop an intimate crowd from jumping along to the angsty bops of Olivia Rodrigo’s new album and joining her in the shared pain of romantic love.
“You’re rocking out, I fucking love you!” Rodrigo yelled from the small stage.
The pop star announced the surprise concert Thursday morning, offering $25 tickets only to fans who arrived to Warsaw, a small Greenpoint, Brooklyn venue, in person starting at 10 A.M. The show comes after the June release of Rodrigo’s third studio album,You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, and marked the opportunity for Rodrigo to play some of her songs live for the first time and show off her chops ahead of her upcoming Daisy Chain Fields Festival in August and global Unraveled Tour.
By evening, the lucky ticket recipients stood shoulder to shoulder in the 1,100-capacity venue that resembles a high school auditorium and also sells pierogis off to the side, in keeping with its origins as a Polish cultural center.
The 15-song set list included a few old favorites, such as “driver’s license,” and “all-american bitch” as well as many songs from the soul-bearing new album, in which Rodrigo tracks the evolution of a romantic relationship, from the beginning highs to its demise. On stage, Rodrigo offered insights into her song-writing process.
“Thank you so much for coming. You waited in line in the heat. This is such a special show. This is the first time I’m playing so many of the songs from my new album live. It’s really, really fun, so thank you so much for joining me. This next song is from my new album. I wrote it in New York and it’s sort of about liking someone so much that you feel completely insane. We’ve all been there right? It’s called ‘stupid song,’” Rodrigo said after kicking off the show with “drop dead” and ““u + me = <3”
“The cure,” in which Rodrigo comes to the realization that romantic love cannot fix her own internal struggles, is her favorite song from the new album, she said, because it took a long time to find the right words to express herself. “I’m really, really proud of this one.” While the sweet, soft “honeybee” was one of the first songs she wrote, inspired by the movie Notting Hill.
The smaller venue made it possible for Rodrigo to lean down and sing inches away from fans in the front row and at one point, grab a fan’s phone to record herself singing straight to camera. This intimacy also helped showcase Rodrigo’s powerful, clear voice as she alternated between belting and bopping on stage to her alt-rock anthems and taking quieter solo moments at the piano, as when she played the Guts deep-cut “making the bed,” which she said she had been thinking about lately.
Toward the end of the show, Rodrigo stood alone on the bare stage, framed only by a spotlight and gripping the mic stand as she crooned the ballad “less.” As the song ended, she grabbed a tissue and wiped what appeared to be tears from her face, before suddenly breaking away from that emotion and yelling “Key change!” as she launched into the upbeat hit “expectations” and began jumping around on stage.
For that number, Rodrigo employed her biggest crowd work yet, as she asked the men in the crowd (admittedly fewer in number) to sing the rhythmic “She’s got big expectations” in as low of a voice as possible, before calling on the women, many of whom came dressed in Rodrigo’s signature babydoll dress, to sing their own mantra, “I’ve got real big expectations.”
Above the crowd, in the VIP section,The Summer I Turned Pretty star Lola Tung beamed and rocked out to the setlist, standing with author and creator of the franchise Jenny Han. Several of Rodrigo’s songs are featured in the series, including “lacy” from her 2023 album Guts. Rodrigo has credited the series for helping that song take off.
As usual, Rodrigo also offered the crowd an opportunity to let go of some of their anger, as in at the end of “good 4 u,” when she asked fans to scream as loud as they could, resulting in an ear-splitting sound distortion.
“What pisses you off? There’s a lot to choose from!,” Rodrigo yelled.
After the concert ended, the sweat-drenched fans with now slicked-backed hair emerged from the building, gingerly clutching the exclusive “one-night only” posters of Rodrigo that were given away at the exit, so as not to get them wet, and to later prove to friends that they were there.
Set List:
“drop dead”
“u + me = <3”
“stupid song”
“my way”
“bad idea”
“honeybee”
“driver’s license”
“making the bed”
“maggots”
“all-american bitch”
“good 4 u”
“the cure”
“less”
“expectations”
“deja vu”
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