At her Madison Square Garden headlining show in early April, Olivia Rodrigo says that she remembers her life in two parts: before she heard the Breeders’ “Cannonball,” and after.
I can also split my life before and after I first heard “Cannonball.” When I listened to it for the first time, loving its weird, messy coolness and unconventionality, I felt like my entire musical identity finally made sense. It informed my own perception and understanding of what music I liked best, what kind of music I wanted to play, and the kind of people that I wanted to surround myself with. The Breeders became the ultimate touchstone with the people I eventually have played music with, over the eight or so years. Liking the Breeders meant that you were into the Pixies but loved their bassist, Kim Deal, even more. After being fired from the Pixies, Kim was intent on making music that wasn’t as male, or chauvinistic, as her previous band. Even now, it’s easy for me to forget that the best part about being in a band is meeting other like-minded female musicians and forming some of the most fulfilling friendships I’ve ever had, because of how it’s become such an integral and important part of my life.
I’ve seen the Breeders a couple of times before; first on my 23rd birthday for the Last Splash anniversary tour, and again a few years later in 2018 at Celebrate Brooklyn! in Prospect Park. When Olivia Rodrigo announced the Breeders as her support act on her Madison Square Garden dates for her stadium tour behind her second album, GUTS, I’ll admit that I shared the same shock as everyone else, even though I was already a fan of Olivia’s. The Breeders? Supporting Olivia Rodrigo? I scoffed at the tour announcement. Surely it should be the other way around? Or not at all? It was an audacious move. But the more I thought about it, the more I understood that the match-up made sense. It’s easy to dismiss Olivia as nothing more than just the latest buzzy Gen-Z popstar who idolized Taylor Swift and had a few viral hits on TikTok. If you allow yourself to withhold judgment and resist the urge to turn your nose up at “pop music, you’d find it pretty easy to hear the Breeders in Olivia Rodrigo.
The other significant factor was the massive exposure the Breeders were going to have by opening these shows. An entire generation of young music fans would have the experience of listening to Last Splash for the very first time. And maybe, just maybe, it would lead to them learning to pick up the guitar.
The melodrama of Olivia’s breakout ballad “drivers license” didn’t do much for me, but it put me on her radar. I connected the most with her angstier songs, like the Paramore-inspired “good 4 u”, and listened to the indie-rocky, art-poppiness of “déja vu” on repeat. I read somewhere that the opening notes of the latter evoked the instrumentation of Radiohead’s “No Surprises.” Olivia Rodrigo, though born in 2003, is a true child of female ’90s alt-rock, a self-proclaimed die-hard fan of Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morrissette, Fiona Apple, et. al. She obviously worships Gwen Stefani. You can hear it in the ways in which she weaves through the poppy hooks of her guitar-heavy tracks, the biting nature of her choruses, her snarl of her delivery. When her debut album, SOUR, came out, I was unimpressed by her dreary ballads (I get it, Olivia is still a theater kid at heart), but it was opener “Brutal,” the last song recorded for the album, that got me: all riot grrrl power chords and dramatized lyrics about growing pains and teenage existentialism that I could still feel the full force of at 26.
I guarantee you that every cool girl who is in your life has resonated, quite deeply, with her music.
Katie Crutchfield, a.k.a. Waxahatchee, wrote in her newsletter:
It wasn’t until I heard her song “Brutal” maybe a year after Sour came out that I stopped & thought “woah….”. The reference points for that song came across as meticulously intentional and extremely niche. The lyrics were funny & self-aware & melodramatic in a way that only an 18 year old could pull off. My inner/former 18 year old was screaming every word.
From there I connected deeply with the whole record and was delightfully obsessed with Guts from the moment it came out. I’ve had this thought I’ve shared before (despite Olivia’s own lyrics stating “When am I gonna stop being great for my age and just start being good?”), that I predict she’s just going to keep getting better and better, eventually making full-blown, culture-setting, world-stopping, the capital B Best music out there. Her first couple of records feel obviously so authentic and evocative, they remind me of Fiona Apple’s first couple of records in a way. I really think when Olivia is Fiona’s age now she’ll achieve a level of strength as a songwriter that few others have. I can’t wait to watch her career unfold and I’m just excited by the energy she brings to music in general.
I became more enamored with Olivia as she toured SOUR, following along from afar as I covered the news around it during my previous job working for another music publication. I saw that she toured with an all-girl band, with musicians who seemed to be close to or around my age; she invited Avril Lavigne on tour to cover “Complicated”; she did a rendition of a Veruca Salt song. I was surprised at how much I found myself relating to her, as a fellow Asian-American girl who worshiped female alt-rock. By summer 2022, the deal was sealed when she performed at Glastonbury and invited Lily Allen onstage for a performance of “Fuck You,” dedicated to the U.S. Supreme Court following the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. It felt great to see someone so young be not just so talented, but completely unafraid to insert her politics into her performances.
I wanted to see her and the Breeders at their NYC stop very badly. Her new album, GUTS, is even better than her first. I was thrilled that the heavy, punky instrumentation of “brutal” was even more apparent across the new record. I noticed that Olivia wasn’t just getting more confident with her songwriting abilities, but she was also learning the art of not taking herself so seriously, at least in her music, poking fun at the triviality of love and heartbreak and finding a kind of humor and wryness in this game of life. How else are we meant to cope?
The date of the MSG show was the same week that Liam Gallagher was playing show with John Squire of Stone Roses, in support of their recent collaborative album. The album is not good: the duo make no attempt to disguise their project as a Beatles tribute band with some Madchester and psych-rock riffs thrown in. The highlight of the record is a song called “Just Another Rainbow,” in which Liam very earnestly and theatrically sings the name of every color of the rainbow in proper ROYGBIV order.
I had convinced myself that by doing shrooms at the show, I would be able to cleanse myself of the Oasis-related traumas I’d encountered over the past six months by closing the karmic cycle through seeing Liam Gallagher play live. I’m not going to go into detail about that here. If I’ve spoken to you at any point in the last six months, you’ll probably have heard some version of it from me. Having to tell some iteration of the story upwards of twenty times to various friends, coworkers, family members, and romantic prospects has gotten slightly easier over time, but not less painful. The more I tell it, and the farther away I get from the incident, I am able to perfect the storytelling, the timing, the punchline. But other times, I worry that the jokey way I tell the story will make others think that I have fully put the whole ordeal behind me. I’m mostly over it by now, but it still doesn’t change that one of the worst moments I’ve ever had to endure will always be inextricably linked to and associated with Oasis. (I’m not even gonna front. I fucking love Oasis. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory is a near-perfect album. Liking Britpop is cool now!)
But my mistake was planning to put my faith, and my request for self-absolution and therefore fulfillment and some sort of salvation, in some dude (the dude in this analogy is Liam Gallagher). I have spent most of my life seeking external validation from men. I think, as women participating in a patriarchal society, this will always be the case, but in 2018 — the year I moved back to New York City from London — I was stuck in an impasse, as I was both craving male attention and validation while feeling as if I could no longer put my faith and trust in men. The men who had been in my life had disappointed me, over and over, and my pessimism and frustration mutated into nihilism. The psychoanalytic explanation for this, as provided by my therapist, is this is because I never grew up with a steady father figure; this led to me searching for approval, subconsciously or not, from various boyfriends, short-term relationships, male higher-ups at work, male friends, male sound engineers, the men we play shows with, the men who watch our set, the men who breathe and coexist alongside me.
I don’t want to be like this, but because we live in a male-dominated world that favors men and maleness, it’s hard to extricate yourself from it. You have to be able to do it consciously. It’s so easy to fall into a trap where you suddenly realize that your life has been wholly shaped by men, because the world is built that way. I made the decision to be in a band with only female-identifying musicians because I wanted to be able to create music and art in a space that I can feel safe in, away from the judgment of men.
This is the one space in my life that I have control over. Once we leave the confines of our rehearsal space (which itself is run by a man in a Tool tribute band), it’s back to reality. Sexism within the music industry is nothing new, the mistreatment of female musicians is nothing new, but it’s still annoying and stupid and frustrating. We’re regulars within the local Brooklyn indie DIY scene, but it’s still dominated by white cis men, even though we try to only book bills with diverse line-ups. The players in this music scene are leftists by default, happily radical with their politics, but still the sexist and patronizing microaggressions are something that happens all the time, almost at every gig. I am confident in the qualities of my band’s music, and in the skills and talents of my bandmates; we are a great band. I wish I could say that the situation has improved; it has not. We played a show at Arlene’s Grocery last September, and a friend of a band we played with told me our set “was great” before very condescendingly trying to instruct us on how to fix the levels of our fidelity so we would sound “even better”. This went on for 10 minutes. During soundcheck for our second Oasis cover show at Our Wicked Lady in January, the sound engineer told me that I was playing the third note in the intro to “Supersonic” wrong: “Not to be a dick, but that third note is a D7, not E,” he told me, a sly smirk on his face.
I believe that he was only trying to be helpful, and I tried to brush his comment off. But it debilitated me. I was already going into the set anxious, and my confidence was at a new low. I’d agreed to do a second Oasis cover set because I was not in a good headspace when we played our first one: I was heartbroken, since it took place two days after I got dumped while I was wearing the exact same Noel Gallagher cosplay outfit. I thought a second repeat performance would just retcon the painful memories of that first one, a chance where I could actually enjoy myself. But putting on that same outfit for Oasis set #2 basically re-traumatized me, and I had to relive that awful Halloween weekend. I’d unwittingly given myself PTSD! It was all so stupid and dumb. I was not confident with my guitar parts, because there was a newfound sadness and hurt associated with those songs, and my lack of confidence made me anxious and restless and nervous in my own ability. It didn’t help that I did shots of whiskey and soju before the set to calm my nerves. This, coupled with the sound engineer’s comment, threw me into a deep state of drunken paranoia. I didn’t have the greatest time up there; I know it was not my best performance. I spent the whole of next day in hangover anxiety purgatory, nauseous and questioning my own abilities as a musician, guitarist, person. Was I good enough? Would I ever be good enough? I hate that I get so affected by comments made by men, but the comments they make are also so inappropriate and condescending. Some of my male friends are no better. I was talking to a friend who’d seen our Oasis set months after the fact, and he told me that he’d heard the sound engineer comment about how my guitar was out of tune. Another flash of shame, embarrassment, and guilt flooded through me. To his credit, he had the decency to look embarrassed after he’d made the comment, but the damage was done. I am always flabbergasted when people make comments to me like this about my set. Even if my friend were to play the shittiest show of their life, I would never tell them such a thing. I would take it to my grave, unless they explicitly asked for my opinion. For the first time in my life, I questioned my skills and capabilities as a musician and guitarist, all because I became unraveled from a chain of various negative comments from men.
But it was only during a recent spiral in the aftermath of hearing yet another negative comment made to me about my band from another man that I forced myself to get a grip on reality. The thing is that I love my band. I know our songs are good. I am confident in my songwriting abilities, and even more confident in the skills of my incredibly talented bandmates. I am my own worst critic; I am incredibly hard on myself, and so I do have enough faith in my abilities to know that what I’m creating is usually solid. I made myself remember that the people whose opinions I actually do care about and respect — that of my female bandmates, my female friends, and female members of the DIY music community — have always been incredibly encouraging and supportive of my band. These are the people whose thoughts I value the most, and are the most important to me, and whose support fulfills me the most, not some shitty male sound engineer or ex-boyfriend probably getting off on an ego trip.
I realized, with a lot of sadness, that sure, it stung when men made shitty comments about my band to my face, but the core of it is that I’ve never had a boyfriend who was fully supportive of my art, probably due to their own low self-esteem and insecurities. Instead of being supportive, I’ve had ex-boyfriends insult my band to their friends and even encourage criticism from annoying male strangers in an attempt to neg me. I began to understand that I do not seek validation from the random men I have around me at any given time; instead, I crave the unconditional encouragement of my partner, regardless of the actual quality of whatever art I make.
I coincidentally had this realization a few days before the first night of Olivia’s four-show MSG run with the Breeders, which I was lucky enough to get invited to through covering the show for The FADER. I’d only decided at the last minute to microdose on shrooms. The Liam Gallagher show was a week later, but I couldn’t resist the idea of singing along to “Divine Hammer” and “bad idea right?” with the help of a little psilocybin. It ended up being one of the most fun and best live show experiences I’ve had.
Sure, I was wary of navigating Madison Square Garden on shrooms, but I did just a small microdose; besides, my ticket had a seat, and I wasn’t planning to scour the stadium once I’d sat down. Navigating my way around wasn’t a problem; the attendees were mostly younger children accompanied by their parents (and wearing lots and lots of purple), and the line for the bars was graciously nonexistent. It was fun seeing the consensus of the costumes, all sparkly purple numbers with a punk edge; Avril Lavigne-core if she wore purple cowboy hats, the Freaky Friday girl band come to life. The come up of my microdose started during the Breeders’ set (it was extremely surreal seeing them play such a big stage like that, knowing that the stadium was composed mostly of children who had been born post-9/11). I was the only one in my row, the dedicated area for journalists, who was standing up excitedly for the Breeders. It was the fucking Breeders!!! I was jumping up and down during “Divine Hammer.” Forget about Gen-Z being introduced to Last Splash for the first time: it was the millennials my age either side of me who were slouched in their seats, stony-faced, as Kim Deal ripped through “Do You Love Me Now.” It was me and the older parents around me, there with their children, who were fully bouncing around.
And for Olivia: what a fucking show. The girl’s got so much talent; she’s gotten so much more confident doing these stadium tours, and her presence and vocals were incredible; she’s such a powerhouse! What I love about Olivia’s music is that she understands that life is messy and turbulent and our humanness that lies in our imperfections; she does not shy away from admitting that she fucked up, fucks up, and that fucking up is just a part of life. She opened her set with “bad idea right?”, one of my favorite songs of last year and one I got to write up for The FADER’s end of year list. I love the Le Tigre bounciness of the song, and its playful, tongue-in-cheek lyrics about the seductive lure of spending a night with an ex. It was incredibly cathartic to yell “I JUST TRIPPED AND FELL INTO HIS BED!!!” at the top of my lungs. It’s hard being rational all the time; sometimes, we just gotta “fuck it, it’s fine” our way into bad decisions. We can deal with the mess of it in the morning.
I got emotional watching her all-female band play live, teared up during the final third of the show that she saved her hardest, loudest songs for: “all-american bitch,” “brutal,” “obsessed” (which she played her St. Vincent Ernie Ball Music Man guitar on), “deja vu,” “good 4 u,” and “get him back!”. It was the best feeling in the world singing along to her songs, songs that I resonate with even though I’m a full decade older than her. I was a nerd in high school and spent all of my time in my room, on my computer, running various fan blogs on Tumblr, and I didn’t get to have the quintessential high school experience I read about and experience endlessly through the movies and television. Through singing along at the Olivia Rodrigo show with 20,000 other girls, though, I felt like I got to experience the high school experience I felt I missed out on, as a woman who is 29 years old yet going through the juvenile motions with men who are in their thirties: “Just watch as I crucify myself / For some weird second string loser who's not worth mentioning / My God, love's embarrassing as hell!.” She saved “get him back!” for the very end, a song about the push-pull of loving and hating a shitty ex: yelling “I wanna meet his mom just to tell her her son sucks!!!!!!” is an experience that every girl, teenage or not, should get to experience once in their lifetimes.
The only sour note I had was that I’d wished I’d gone with my friends. I am so grateful that I was invited by Olivia’s team to attend the show, and I had such a blast, but there was a moment where Olivia asked the crowd who they were there with, and if they were there with their best friends. I wished that I’d been there with my own mates, screaming and shouting and singing along, but I can do that at band practice, or at home, or at karaoke, or as just a regular Friday night.
I found salvation from my pain not through watching a man, e.g. the former lead singer of Oasis play. I find it instead through singing along to my favorite female musicians, and spending time with the women in my life I admire and am so fortunate and lucky enough to be able to call my friends.