When Olivia Rodrigo began her European tour in Dublin in April 2024, it was a performance resplendent with pop energy and punk-rock fervour. Opening with the Pixies-go-bubblegum ‘Bad Idea, Right?’ and then swerving into Gen Z emo bangers ‘Vampire’ and ‘Drivers License’, she showcased a pedal-to-the-floor stage presence and an irrepressible sense of fun. The atmosphere was somewhere between moshpit and the school disco.

It was a potent mix – one that continues to set her apart from other pop stars of her generation. Who among her peers shares Rodrigo’s love of 1990s indie rock – a passion forged listening to her parents’ Smashing Pumpkins and Hole records? Now Rodrigo (22) is doing it all over again. She’s back for a victory lap with a new tour that opens at Marlay Park in Dublin before moving on to Glastonbury and Hyde Park in the UK. Fans will be busting a gut to make it to south Dublin.

These gigs will be a celebration of Guts – her 2023 second album and a record which emerged from a period of flux and uncertainty in her life. Rodrigo has been upfront about being caught unawares by the success of the aforementioned ‘Drivers License’, her 2021 single rumoured to have been inspired by her break-up from fellow High School Musical actor Joshua Bassett.

At that point, Rodrigo was a vaguely well-known teen pop figure – but hardly a superstar. ‘Drivers License’ – soon followed by chart-topping debut LP Sour – changed everything, whilst also sparking a blitz of speculation regarding her split from Bassett and the “other woman” alluded to in the lyrics – “That blonde girl… she’s so much older than me”. The record shows that, after moving on from Rodrigo, Bassett dated future ‘Espresso’ mega-star Sabrina Carpenter. Was she the villain of the piece?

Carpenter did not think so and got her defence in with the 2022 single ‘Because I Like A Boy’ (“Just two kids going though it… now I’m a home-wrecker, I’m a slut… I got death threats filling up semi-trucks”).
Bassett had something to say about the situation, too – seemingly pushing back with the song ‘Lie, Lie, Lie’. As the tune alludes, the notoriety made him a figure of opprobrium on social media.

“I would see TikToks with like 50 million views and 10 million likes saying, ‘If I ever see that kid on the street, I’m going to fucking kill him,’” he told GQ. “It’s hard to see that and then be living in New York and walking down the street.”

This was a big drama then, and it’s understandable that Rodrigo would want to move on – as she explained to Rolling Stone in 2023, she was determined her second album be anything other than a break-up LP. She’d been there and done that – and the internet had filled in the blanks.

Thus was born Guts – a mane-shaking updating of the zinging punk of Sour. Working once again with producer and co-writer Dan Nigro (a forty-something veteran of the LA punk scene and also a collaborator with Chappell Roan), she put a confident new gloss on her shiny guitar sound – albeit after a period of soul searching.

“The beginning was really hard,” she told Rolling Stone. “I felt like I couldn’t write a song without thinking about what other people were going to think of it. There were definitely days where I found myself sitting at the piano, excited to write a song, and then cried.”

The problem, she revealed to The New Yorker, is that she had never dreamed of overnight success. To be catapulted from the streaming C-list of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series to the top of the charts and prime billing at the Grammys was a lot for a 19-year-old from a non-show business family (her mother is a teacher, her father a therapist).

“It took maybe a year or a year-and-a-half of truly working on it. And I had a lot of reservations when starting out the album-making process,” she elaborated . “Coming off of the very unexpected, very appreciated success that Sour had, there was so much pressure on what would come next. I had all these voices in my head – what I thought people would like, not wanting to let people down. And so it took me a while to get to a place where I finally felt like I could be creative and just start writing songs that I wanted to hear on the radio, which should always be your paramount focus when you’re making anything.”

But get there she did, and her new Guts World Tour: Spilled will be a well-deserved victory lap for a pop star with a punk soul. And it all starts in Dublin – a very good idea… right!

• Olivia Rodrigo plays Marlay Park on June 24.