Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘GUTS’ tour isn’t meant for children, and that’s OK

This week, Olivia Rodrigo’s team stopped the distribution of Plan B and similar contraceptive supplies at concerts. The National Network of Abortion Funds, who ran tables handing out the products, told Jezebel that Rodrigo’s team stopped the distribution because “the items would be too accessible to young girls in attendance.” This decision came after public pressure over a viral Tweet from Rodrigo’s stop in St. Louis where Plan B was distributed with handouts saying “Funding abortion? It’s a good idea, right?”

This outrage comes out of a growing conversation about who the correct audience for Rodrigo’s shows is. Rodrigo’s performances in the “GUTS World Tour” mirror the content of the album. While some songs are done as solo piano ballads, many of the numbers, like “Obsessed” and “Bad Idea Right?” are playfully sexual and provocative.

The new nature of her performances, along with the distribution of contraceptives, has launched hundreds of TikTok and Tweets about whether the former Disney darling’s shows are too inappropriate for young fans. Yet to me, these debates ignore a simple fact: as a musician, Rodrigo has never censored her artistry for public appeal. Not since she was 13 years old and sang about blobfishes and bad comebacks in her Disney Channel show “Bizaardvark” has her music been “family friendly.”

To demand her concert be more appropriate fundamentally contradicts what made Rodrigo famous: her authentic voice. The songs off “GUTS” are more sexual because Rodrigo is an adult now, as opposed to “SOUR,” which she wrote as a teen. Rodrigo’s opinions on the intersection between abortion access and concerts have been clear since she dedicated a cover of Lily Allen’s “Fuck You” to the U.S. Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. The “provocative” dance moves or “more revealing” costumes speak to the tone and language of her songs. After all, what did we think lyrics like “I tripped and fell into his bed,” were referring to?

An artist having a specific audience is not a bad thing. Just as we didn’t pan Taylor Swift for singing about serious relationships with songs like “Paper Rings” or Adele for singing about divorce, we can’t expect Rodrigo to censor her life experiences to better suit certain listeners.

Like the case with many child stars, the public still sees Rodrigo as the 17-year-old who rose to fame while on a Disney show. The perception of Rodrigo is frozen — she is still seen as the naive, codependent and overly sweet Nini Salazar-Roberts from “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” (HSMTMTS).

Yet even when Rodrigo was on the show, she worked to push back against the Disney image. “HSMTMTS” was an experimental show for Disney. With its Disney+ streaming-exclusive launch, the show was angled more towards teens than children. Rodrigo doubled down on this separation, choosing to sign her record deal with Interscope/Geffen, independent of Disney. Then in her debut single, “drivers license,” Rodrigo openly swore, marking a clear departure from overtly child-friendly content.

Now three years later, Rodrigo continues to be stuck in a debate she’s actively worked to make her opinion clear on. Ultimately, Rodrigo is successful because of her genuine descriptions of the emotional intensity that is tied to being a young adult. The constant relatability I’ve found through Rodrigo’s music is what has made her my favorite artist.

In 2019, I fawned over Nini Salazar-Roberts when “HSMTMTS” premiered on Disney+. For those nine weeks that the series aired in my sophomore year of high school, I rushed home after school to watch Rodrigo in her latest episode. I found myself particularly attached to her song “All I Want,” which was written by Rodrigo, but performed as her character. As a sweet, and somewhat naive, 15-year-old, I too just wanted a “love that lasts.”

A year later, I stayed up until midnight when “drivers license” came out. I played it so much those first two days, I nearly drove my sister to the brink. In those first days after the explosion of “drivers license,” there was a sense of shock that Rodrigo openly swore in the song. I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around the drama. She was 17 when the song came out. As a 16-year-old, everything she said felt perfectly reasonable to me. She was heartbroken about a messy relationship that ended terribly, and I could only imagine myself reacting the same way.

When “SOUR” debuted a week after my first boyfriend and I broke up, I cried to the album nearly every day for a month. In my high school newspaper review of the album, I wrote “In ‘SOUR,’ it feels as though Rodrigo is painting a portrait of the emotions of the modern teen, with lyrics that are both poised and accurate. It is almost as if she is mirroring my very own life.”

That is the crux of Rodrigo’s artistry: she mirrored my life as a teenager because Rodrigo herself was a teenager. While themes in music can be universal, the “SOUR” album was specifically about the pain and drama of adolescence.

Take the album’s opening track, “brutal,” where Rodrigo sings how “I’m sick of 17/Where’s my fucking teenage dream?” and “I hate the way I’m perceived/I only have two real friends/And lately, I’m a nervous wreck.” The lyrics are angry and messy and honest. When I couldn’t explain to my mom why my anxiety was getting so bad there were days I couldn’t handle being at school for the full day, I played her this song and something clicked. The two-minute and 25-second long song that Rodrigo wrote in one day became a song that was able to explain my own emotions better than I could.

By requiring Rodrigo to be universally palpable and apolitical, Rodrigo’s music and performance lose its value. If Rodrigo’s songs talk about sex, her fans should be old enough to understand what contraceptives are. Ultimately, the best parts of Rodrigo’s music — passion and emotion — are erased when she is forced into an archetype that she never asked to be.