Olivia Rodrigo at Glastonbury 2025: a popstar with rockstar power
Every year at Glastonbury it’s the same. The lineup gets announced, a chorus kicks off at whoever the popstar is. This year, the target of the classic (and boring) wrath of the purist rock fans was Olivia Rodrigo – who went on to put on a rock show of the ages on the Pyramid Stage.
Since the dawn of modern pop, its biggest stars have been backed up by the tightest of bands. It’s rare to find a major pop star who hasn’t done at least one rock track, had one rock pivot or doesn’t talk openly about being inspired by that world. Madonna was as gritty as they come originally. Kylie Minogue worked with Nick Cave. George Michael was deeply inspired by Joy Division. The line between those two worlds has always been blurred, as much as stereotypical fans of the heavier world would like to deny it.
Recently, it’s got even foggier. It feels like the big pop show has become the big rock show. Renee Rapp has ‘Towa Bird’ on hand to shred through her attitude-heavy hits, Sabrina Carpenter opens up with the big riff of ‘Taste’, and Olivia Rodrigo is on the frontlines of exactly that – proving herself to be a popstar with rockstar power.
It’s been there from the start. Her debut album begins with ‘Brutal’, a near-enough punk track where she sings about being exploited by the industry and then lands it with the pop hook of “god, it’s brutal out here”. On the Glastonbury stage, as she emerges for her Sunday night headline slot at only 22, making her the second youngest after Billie Eilish, who was 20, it begins as a rock show through and through. Within moments, fireworks are cracking, flames are flying, and her all-female band pack a raging punch during ‘Obsessed’.
It’s the best of both. Rodrigo has the infectiousness of a pure popstar. That’s the Disney kid training that comes out in how naturally she plays to the camera and draws the spanning crowd into the emotion of each song, leading to some of the festival’s biggest and most heartfelt sing-alongs during ‘Vampire’ and ‘Drivers License’. But she’s most interesting in the moments that splinter off from the bubblegum, bratty, princess energy that those initial critiques would rather never touch the Pyramid Stage.
There have been a lot of rumours about special guests, with names like Sabrina Carpenter and Robbie Williams thrown about. But when she brings out The Cure’s Robert Smith to sing ‘Friday, I’m In Love’ and ‘Just Like Heaven’, looking like she could cry in awe during both, it punctuates the fact that Rodrigo’s influences go far beyond the pop world, making that energy impossible to deny for the rest of the show. And as Smith is caught watching on from side-of-stage, it’s a powerful co-sign and the ultimate seal of approval on the fact that the dividing border between pop and rock that so many desperately try to police has collapsed.
And honestly, who cares? What makes a good headline performance? Is it not just pure energy? Excitement? Are people not just there for a great time? Rodrigo delivered that easily as the benefit of a popstar is always the spectacle they bring. Merging that with incredibly tight musicality as her band could genuinely rival any other rock set-up on the lineup, it makes for something that surely anyone in that field could have bought into.
It was only a few years ago that Rodrigo had her Glastonbury debut. In that moment, when she brought out Lily Allen in 2022 to sing ‘Fuck You’ in protest of the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs Wade. It was one of the year’s highlights and not only a headline-securing, star-solidifying slot for Rodrigo, but early proof that under the perfect popstar exterior, there’s a true, spirited rockstar in there too.
