Olivia Rodrigo in Singapore: Why the Gen Z singer’s emotional honesty is exactly what millennials need

Any rational adult knows it is a bad idea to see your ex again after not hearing from them for a couple of months – especially if they call your phone when they’re all alone and you’re sensing some undertone. 
But I swear over 12,000 people belting out the lyrics to Bad Idea Right? on Tuesday evening (Oct 1) – Day 1 of Olivia Rodrigo’s concert at the Singapore Indoor Stadium – nearly convinced me otherwise. 
Never mind adults, people in love are hardly rational – and the 21-year-old pop-rock sensation knows this. Her fans, known as Livies, love her for embracing tumultuous teenage emotions that admittedly last way into adulthood in her songwriting. 
When she opened her 23-song set, which included an encore, with Bad Idea Right?, the devil-may-care anthem about being tempted to rekindle with an ex not only set the mood for the night. It was the perfect introduction to Rodrigo for concertgoers who may not be too familiar with her wheelhouse.
Singapore is Rodrigo’s penultimate stop in the Asia leg of her Guts world tour, where she will also perform on Wednesday night, following concerts in Bangkok, Seoul, Hong Kong and Tokyo. The Filipino American will then head to Manila for a one-night show. 
When tickets went on sale earlier this year, I found myself muting notifications on a work day, so I wouldn’t get distracted by an important Slack ping in the middle of the more important task: Procuring tickets for the previously one-night only concert here. It was extended to two days after tickets sold out quickly. 
Rodrigo might be squarely Gen Z as a 2003 baby, but her songs speak to a specific subset of millennials (it me) whose iPod playlist largely comprises hits from early 2000s pop-punk pioneers, like Avril Lavigne and Paramore. It’s no surprise that she’s credited both artistes among her influences, at least to those who’ve practically memorised her discography. 
In fact, her appeal to millennials is almost a running gag among Livies. Older Livies like myself often take playful jabs at ourselves for being the standout millennial or Gen X fan at a Rodrigo concert, as though it’s an anomaly for someone our age to find music produced by someone her age utterly and completely arresting.
To be fair, I didn’t expect Rodrigo’s viral single Drivers License to turn me into a full-fledged fan when Spotify recommended the instant earworm to me in early 2021. I misguidedly assumed that the former Disney star couldn’t possibly replicate the same catchy bop in her debut studio album to be released later that year. 
Then Sour came out and I, along with many card-carrying millennials, all but fell in love. 
It wasn’t just Rodrigo’s gut-wrenching, sometimes unnerving, honesty that I was drawn to. Rather, she seemed so nonchalant about tackling teenhood’s ugly and uncomfortable emotions head on – not in hindsight but as she was facing them. 
Emotions like anger, jealousy and unhappiness were rarely depicted as shameful to have, though if she felt ashamed, she embraced the shame too. It was all part of being a girl – a foreign concept to millennial women like myself whose learned ability to suppress and dismiss our feelings from young inadvertently led to internalised misogyny we spend much of adulthood confronting. 
By the time she released her second studio album Guts in 2023, I was in a parasocial relationship with a 20-year-old I thought was the coolest person alive.
When Rodrigo got to Vampire, her third song of the night on Tuesday, the whole stadium was knee-deep in their feelings, screaming their lungs out to her lead single from Guts about being taken advantage of, lied to, and ultimately used by a lover. I imagine it was sheer catharsis for anyone nursing a recent heartbreak, with a whole stadium full of people seemingly in the same boat. 
Even within the realm of heartache and histrionics, Rodrigo finds a way to showcase her range – vocally, emotionally and even theatrically. 
Switching up the tempo several songs later with the more upbeat Love Is Embarrassing, in which she turns to self-deprecation by deriding herself for being attracted to her crush, her confidence and self-assuredness on stage far belied her young age. 
Judging by her mini soliloquy before beginning Teenage Dream too, you wouldn’t be able to tell she was just 21. Having written the song a few days before her 19th birthday, she opined that if she could give her 18-year-old self any advice, she’d want her to know that she has no idea how many “magical things” were around the corner for her. 
I only developed the same gratitude for life’s ups and downs a decade later than she did, so I knew from once being a teenage girl that her words were like gospel to fans around me. And I found myself wishing they realised how lucky they were to have someone they idolise remind them of life’s core truth: It works itself out.
Then in the second half of the show, Rodrigo told audiences that the standout lyric from slower fan favourite Happier – “I hope you’re happy but don’t be happier” – came to her out of the blue while she was on set. 
I remember the first time I heard that lyric, its refreshing candour stuck with me, perhaps because the songs I was used to often relied on metaphor to mask the pain of being in love. That she could plainly and quite literally lay it bare, without being prosaic, was enviable. I realised the secret wasn’t that she grew up in a world that didn’t shame her out of such intensity, but that she pushed back. 
It’s been said that Rodrigo is among the generation of Gen Z women changing the face of pop. There’s Sabrina Carpenter, who exudes playfulness and an astounding comfort with her sexuality, and Chappell Roan, a role model for how to exert one’s boundaries and make one’s voice heard. 
Then there’s Rodrigo, whose bold acceptance of her own raw, often messy, feelings is not just infectious. 
For this 30-something millennial at least, it’s also healing.