Olivia Rodrigo at Marlay Park: Pop star surprises fans with Fontaines DC cover during a brilliantly energetic show
Olivia Rodrigo
Marlay Park, Dublin
★★★★★
Whatever else
Olivia Rodrigo
fans expected of the singer as they made their way to her
Marlay Park
concert in deepest South Dublin, they surely didn't anticipate her weighing in on the scourge of Civil War politics in Ireland. Yet that's what they get after a fashion, as halfway through an evening of brilliantly energetic punk-pop, she embarks on a cover of
Dublin
indie band
Fontaines DC's
I Love You.
'The gall of
Fine Gael
and the fail of
Fianna Fáil
,' the 22-year-old former star of
Disney's
High School Musical shrieks as the song hurtles towards its endpoint. She is cheered on by hordes of 12-year-olds who have emulated the singer's love of the colour purple by dressing in varying shades of violet and mauve while waving official Olivia Rodrigo glow-sticks (€20 from the merch stall).
Rodrigo introduces the track by explaining she is a fan of the Irish alternative scene. 'You guys have really incredible music here,' she says. 'They are so many incredible bands out of Dublin. Lately I've been really obsessed with this band Fontaines DC. I've been playing this song alone in my room.'
Was @Olivia Rodrigo covering Fontaines D.C. on your 2025 bingo card?! 🤘
Out of her room and in front of an audience of 35,000 or so, Rodrigo is revealed to be not just another Disney-approved star but a Gen Zer with a headbanging spirit deep in her marrow. She arrives to the strain of We Got the Beat by The Go-Go's, an all-woman LA punk band, and then plunges into Obsessed, a zippy indie-pop workout that showcases Rodrigo's passion for loud guitars and for singing with her lips curled and teeth bared, as if she can't make up her mind whether to write a power-ballad about a useless ex or kick them in the shins (or elsewhere).
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The only negative about the performance is the fact it is taking place in Marlay Park, an awkward location underserved by public transport at the best of times and which, unless you're a local, takes hours to get home from with roads for miles around gridlocked after final curtain. Many attendees will have spent more time travelling back from the gig than they spent at the actual show. Given the age profile, there is also a decent chance that they will have school the next day. It is a once-a-year endurance test, if that.
Rodrigo
played Dublin 14 months ago
. But to her credit, she has mixed up the set and returns with new backing visuals (the night begins with an image of her walking a tightrope as her band kicks up a ruckus). She is also leaning ever further into the idea that she is a sweaty rocker trapped in the frame of a young pop star. During the rollicking outro to the Pixies-esque Bad Idea Right? for instance, she and her guitarist echo
David Bowie
and
Mick Ronson's
famous guitar-licking routine from their Ziggy Stardust days. From this mauve mega-star of 21st-century rock, it's a purple reign to cherish.
Without the guitars, Rodrigo makes for an excellent pop icon – as she demonstrates on a terrifically poignant Deja Vu. Encoring with the gently moshing onslaught of Good 4 U and Get Him Back, she climbs a scaffold on the ramp leading into the audience and yells into a loud hailer. There is one further surprise. Rodrigo is so smote with her Irish fans that she accedes to requests from the pit and delivers a second encore in the form of a wispy ballad, Lacy. It's an emotional end to a fantastic show – if only the trip home weren't such an epic undertaking.
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