Stream It Or Skip It?

Olivia Rodrigo: Guts World Tour comes to Netflix as the platinum-selling singer, songwriter, and actress is still out on the road in support of her second album. For Sour, her 2021 debut, Rodrigo was playing rooms and theaters, and it was only for a duration of four months. For Guts, she’s playing shows in arenas across five continents, including a sold-out August 2024 stand at Intuit Dome Arena in Los Angeles, where Guts World Tour was filmed. The singing and shouting along begins with the opening notes of “Bad Idea Right?” and doesn’t really quit until the encore 22 songs later – but the LA crowd also reaches for a raucous new gear once Rodrigo brings out special guest Chappell Roan for a kicky rendition of the latter’s “Hot to Go!” 

The Gist: “Our last two shows for awhile!” Olivia Rodrigo tells her band and support team in the pre-concert huddle captured in Guts World Tour. “Let’s make LA and Netflix our fucking best!” As it turns out, her songwriting is not an outlier. Rodrigo also loves a curse word in immediate conversation, and during her lively stage banter. That’s just one of the fast facts revealed in Guts, which from top to bottom finds the singer in a lively performance of the set she and her band have been playing all over the world. The arena setting is just right for the chunky, 90s alternative-style guitars that frame Guts highlight “Bad Idea Right,” and as Rodrigo bolts up and down the stage’s two catwalks, her band always stays prominent in the center, situated below a large video screen. Their setup includes two electric guitars, bass and drums, keys, and backup singers. But in keeping with the evening’s purple color scheme, Rodrigo accompanies herself on an appropriately-hued acoustic guitar for “So American,” and grabs a custom lavender version of St. Vincent’s signature electric rig for the raging “All-American Bitch.”

Live, Rodrigo balances her handful of huge, big chorus songs with quieter material that explores insecurity, jealousy, and body image. But either way, the crowd came to Guts World Tour to sing along. Like during the back-to-back moment of “Vampire” and “Traitor,” where the chorus of voices in support of Rodrigo’s vocal is like a torrential indoor rainfall. She’s loving it, of course – “Da–uhm, LA, you guys are making me blush up here! Shit!” – and while she celebrates her tour experiences of drinking wine in Italy and eating escargot in France, Rodrigo reserves her ultimate shout-out for getting an In-N-Out Double-Double in her hometown of Los Angeles. From the stage, and throughout this entertaining set, Rodrigo’s attitude is very much that of someone who’s still a little new to playing such a big room. But that also means she’s very, very not interested in being anything less than larger than life. 

At Intuit, the fans eat up her every lyrical improv. But Rodrigo is also hyper-aware of the Netflix camera, too. During two songs she sings while perched on a crescent moon that travels on cables above the audience, Rodrigo reserves a few moments to wave and point directly at those who will be viewing her concert special exclusively on streaming. And then there’s Chappell Roan. Roan was Rodrigo’s opener for the first leg of the Guts tour, and she returns as a special guest for this Netflix-facing show in Los Angeles, where Roan and Rodrigo run up their respective catwalks and basically whip everybody into a pop frenzy. “Raise your hands now body roll!”

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? With the arrival of Guts World Tour, you can compare/contrast Olivia Rodrigo in her arena level stardom moment with the slightly younger Olvia from Driving Home 2 U (Disney+), which was filmed in the midst of her popular breakthrough. (Members of Rodrigo’s regular backing appear in both films.) And Disney is still streaming Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version), if you have yet to catch up to that epic live document.   

Performance Worth Watching: Staging for the Guts Tour aims for straightforward and visible over anything crazy elaborate, and everything is always bathed in purple. But viewing it from this side of things, one feature that feels purpose-built for the show’s Netflix audience is a dynamic moving camera rig that follows the action from beneath clear panels embedded in the catwalks. 

Memorable Dialogue: Introducing her song “Teenage Dream” from Guts, Olivia Rodrigo says that when she wrote it, she was afraid of the future. But a lot can change in three years, as she sits at a grand piano onstage in front of 18,000 screaming fans. “Now that I’m 21, I don’t feel afraid of growing up at all. In fact, I’m really, really looking forward to it.” 

Sex and Skin: There are a few official costume changes in Guts World Tour, as Rodrigo goes from a sparkly shorts and top set to a black shorts and top set, adds a layer of chain mail at one point, returns in bold red and big black boots to a set-closing stage ringed in flames, and for an encore of “Good 4 U” and “Get Him Back,” rocks a tank top featuring a “Liv Laugh Love” iron-on decal.

Our Take: There is next to nothing in Olivia Rodrigo: Guts World Tour that isn’t plugged in on stage. While she appears in a brief pre-show vamp, and when it’s all said and done her adoring fans rain down garlands of flowers and a “Gays for Liv” cowboy hat, it feels important that Rodrigo is onstage doing the damn thing for nearly the entirety of this special. It’s a live document of her first larger-scale arena tour, after all, and that sets her up at a new career tier. But it also invites scrutiny from the perspective of WWTD, or What Would Taylor Do. It’s no secret Swift is an influence on Rodrigo’s songwriting. But with the enormity of Taylor’s soon-to-end Eras Tour, and her own recent release of the home-viewing version, it’s a question of how that very bright light might overshadow Swift’s contemporaries in the pop game. 

Don’t worry, Rodrigo is worthy of her own chunk of the spotlight. Her live concert budget doesn’t include lichen-filled Evermore landscapes. But she sings the entirety of “Making the Bed” while framed on an imaginary mattress, and totally sells the moment. And she sits cross legged at the lip of a catwalk, and accompanied a bandmate on acoustic guitar sings “Happier” like it was to just one person in the room. Guts World Tour is a very song-first production that leaves lots and lots of room for the voices of her audience, and showcases Rodrigo’s very good, all-female band in a way that promotes the rocktastic splendor and head banging of behind-the-head electric guitar solos, but also the vulnerability, empowerment, and unbridled first-person rage Rodrigo sings about as a young woman. Whenever her troupe of backup dancers appear, it’s like she’s manifesting her id and they’re representing the rest of her range – and rage – of emotions. Either way, Guts is all Olivia, all the time.

Our Call: Stream It! Olivia Rodrigo: Guts World Tour brings the show to the pop singer’s LA hometown in loud fashion, but its scope also translates well to Netflix’s small screen edition. All of Rodrigo’s hits are here, too. And if that doesn’t do it for you, maybe a “Hot To Go!” duet with Chappell Roan will?

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.