Billboard Live Music Summit 2024
Olivia Rodrigo is ready to take a well-deserved break at the conclusion of her Guts World Tour in 2025. When asked what she plans to do after the tour — which continues next year in Brazil, Mexico, Ireland and the U.K. — Rodrigo told Billboard’s deputy editor Lyndsey Havens: “I’m so excited to just rot on the couch and eat so much food.”
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Rodrigo was presented with the touring artist of the year honor at Billboard’s 2024 Live Music Summit in Los Angeles on Thursday (Nov. 14) after her Guts World Tour grossed $184.6 million from over 1.4 million tickets sold, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
After shows on the tour, Rodrigo says she immediately gets offstage and ices her feet, which she joked is “really sexy.”
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“I jump around a lot, like my calves get sore. So, yeah, that’s what I do. Take a shower, take off my makeup, and head back to the hotel,” Rodrigo said. “It’s really not that exciting. It’s a really interesting shift to go from like being in front of 1000s of people to like being alone in your hotel rooms.”
While on tour, Rodrigo said one of her favorite songs to perform for catharsis is “All-American Bitch,” which features the young star floating over the audience on a crescent moon.
“There’s a part of the song where I make the whole audience scream and think of something that you hate or something that really ticks you off, and just let it all out and scream. I think that’s so powerful,” Rodrigo said. “It’s very cathartic. It feels like a rage room or something. There’s something so cool about being able to be in a room with 1000s of people and to be anonymous and get all your emotions out. I just love that aspect of music.”
Her energy onstage matches that of some of her all-time favorite live performers, which she said includes Beyoncé and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
In October, Rodrigo released her tour documentary Olivia Rodrigo: GUTS World Tour on Netflix, and watching it back in film format, the singer said it was hard not to be critical of herself.
“I was trying not to be too critical the whole time. I’m just like, ‘Be nice to yourself.’ It’s really weird because I know that show like the back of my hand. I’ve done it so many times,” she said. “Watching it I was like, ‘Why are you so nervous? You got it, girl. You got it.’”
When asked if anything surprised her from seeing herself perform for the first time, Rodrigo said, “I was working out so much on tour and I watched things back, I was like, ‘Yeah, I got muscles in my arms for the first time in my life.’ That was surprising.”
Global touring has drastically changed in the last 30-plus years, according to Live Nation Concerts president of global touring/chairman Arthur Fogel. During a conversation at the Billboard Live Music Summit in Los Angeles on Thursday (Nov. 14), the veteran promoter said infrastructure around the globe has drastically improved and opened touring to nearly double the number of countries over that time.
“The first time that I went to South America was in the 1990s with David Bowie, so 35-ish years ago. It was a different world down there. It was a very different world everywhere,” said Fogel. “It was the Wild West. It was very difficult, despite the audience being great, but you fast forward to today and the level of expertise that’s been created. There’s the ability to do business on a very serious level.”
In conversation with Haus of Gaga’s Bobby Campbell, who is Lady Gaga‘s manager, Fogel explained that global touring is “night and day” compared to 35 years ago when North American artists would only have the opportunity to tour 15 to 20 countries. Now, Fogel said there are 60 to 70 countries available to them.
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According to Campbell, touring has become more than just an economic engine for artists; it’s become a marketing driver for the music itself.
“You used to have cycles where you put out the album, promote the album through talk shows and TV performances and award shows, then eventually you go on tour,” said Campbell. “Now tours are becoming a central part of the marketing plan for the album.” He added that artists will now change small aspects of their shows, such as the setlist or certain dance moves, to create new content for each stop.
These small adjustments are a far stretch from the dramatic changes tours would have to make decades ago as they crossed continents, explained Fogel, who said that artists used to create a touring show specifically for North America and then scale back and change it for other parts of the world.
“There are so many new state-of-the-art venues coming online that have really helped propel the ability for artists to go and play all kinds of different places,” said Fogel, who pointed out that Africa, essentially the last frontier on the touring front, has recently opened up.
“South America, Central America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, India, South Africa, Eastern Europe — all those territories and regions of the world that were once very hard to access in terms of touring have really developed dramatically over the last decade and a half,” Fogel added. “To provide the opportunity for an artist to go basically anywhere in the world at this point and connect with their fans is really a pretty interesting and important piece. Maybe it’s the most important piece in terms of development in our business.”
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