‘Confessions of a 30-year-old teenager’: The elder millennial Olivia Rodrigo fan speaks

A product of the Disney pipeline, Olivia Rodrigo has a battalion of preteen fans, even as the singer fights to be edgier on her headlining “Guts Tour” that began mere days after her 21st birthday.

With influences like Avril Lavigne, Paramore, and No Doubt in her music, elder millennials can’t help but feel pulled to Rodrigo’s songs, too. It can make for an awkward situation, some fans say, when considering attending her concerts.

Threads from users asking if they’re the appropriate demographic to attend her tour or enjoy her music continue to pop up on Reddit.

“Just turned 31,” one user wrote. “Going to Guts tour alone and hoping I don’t look weird lol.” The comment received more than 100 upvotes.

In classic “not a girl, not yet a woman” form, 30-something-year-old Livies (as Rodrigo’s fan army calls itself) are stuck in limbo between being well past the high school themes of Rodrigo’s songs and being not old enough to have teenage kids to bring to the concert.

The “Guts Tour” isn’t quite kid-friendly in the first place. For months, parents of elementary school-aged Livies who grew up watching Rodrigo in Bizaardvark and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, listened to their children begging for tickets to the mostly sold-out world tour, only to learn later that the show can be a bit mature at points, Bloomberg reported.

It’s a shift older fans say was predictable — the ol’ Miley Cyrus playbook. Since her departure from Disney, Rodrigo has dropped select F-bombs in her songs, sold branded shot glasses, and offered free condoms and lube at her shows (this practice stopped weeks into the tour citing the number of children present). A déjà vu for fans who witnessed Cyrus outgrow her Hannah Montana schoolgirl persona in real time, swapping it for twerking on stage.

Still, Rodrigo’s lingering youth demographic is unavoidable at her shows. Toni Scola, a 26-year-old ELA teacher based in South Philly, says she bonds with her 13- and 14-year-old students over their shared taste in music.

“A lot of my students love Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, and even Morgan Wallen, which are all artists I love,” she told The Inquirer. “Being the ‘young’ teacher has its perks and I love being able to talk with the kids about pop culture, but it also makes me almost second-guess myself like, ‘Am I going to run into students at this concert?’”

At Rodrigo’s sold-out tour stop at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center on Friday, the venue was studded with elementary-school-aged kids and tweens in Doc Martens flocking to buy merch and take photos ahead of the tour.

Becca Rose, 35, of Newbold, said she wouldn’t let the droves of young fans dissuade her from attending the show.

“It’s all about letting go and just enjoying it,” she said. “No one cares that you ‘don’t fit in’ except yourself. So if you’re able to let go of that, you can have fun at any concert. I love shows like this — or Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, or the Rolling Stones — because the age range is so extreme. There are young kids, older parents with their kids, there’s really not a ‘right age.’”

She added, “The more concerts you go to out of the ‘right age’ or whatever norm you think you’re breaking, the more normal and fun it’ll feel.”

The perk of being an elder millennial at the rock show, fans say, is having a more disposable income. Many millennials were more willing and able to splurge for the high-cost and high-demand Rodrigo tickets than their Gen Z and Gen Alpha counterparts.

In Philly, the “Guts Tour” had been sold out for months with single resale tickets selling for as much as $2,000 a pop.

Rose said she purchased her single ticket for $350 on StubHub after not making the cut for the tickets’ original sale.

Brandi Brands, 32, from the Poconos region, who was attending the tour with another friend in her 30s, declined to disclose how much she paid for tickets, but shared that it was a “hefty price tag.”

For Brands, some of the draw to Rodrigo’s music is a nostalgia play. She admits that the Guts album reminds her a lot of an artist from her generation, Lavigne.

“I’ve always idolized women in rock music. I’ve always loved Joan Jett and Alanis Morissette,” she told The Inquirer. “It’s almost like Olivia is carrying on their legacy and bringing their music to younger generations while also showing older fans like myself how much she probably appreciates the path that they blazed for her.”

Randi Hickey, 29, of West Passyunk, shared a similar sentiment.

“There’s a certain nostalgia for music that perfectly encapsulates girlhood in all of its complexities that you can dance to,” she said. “It’s giving Britney, Christina, Pink, etcetera,” she said.

Hickey took to a private women’s support group on Facebook to find other millennial fans to meet up with at the show. She was successful, meeting up with a new friend while in line for Rodrigo’s fan experience pop-up.

“I often find myself on the older end of the crowd at concerts lately,” Hickey said. “But the girlies are there to have fun and so am I!”