Olivia Rodrigo lives up to impossible hype, hints at an even brighter future, at Milwaukee's Eagles Ballroom

Ten shows into her first tour ever and it's already clear — Olivia Rodrigo will have one of the brightest, and longest-lasting, music careers of her generation.

Following the inescapable phenomenon that was last year's "Drivers License" — followed by other singles and a debut album, "Sour," that showed it was no fluke — the 19-year-old heir apparent to Taylor Swift's pop-songwriting crown played a sold-out Eagles Ballroom at the Rave in Milwaukee Tuesday.

Selling out a 3,500-person-capacity room is no easy feat. But Rodrigo probably could have sold out Fiserv Forum and every arena in every city she's playing this spring.

The songs are that popular, and that powerful. The live show made them even better.

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Take "Brutal," the first song of a short-but-explosive 60-minute set. The "Sour" opener's jagged punk guitar was unleashed in spaced-out bursts, the band still concealed by a curtain. For a ravenous crowd of teens awaiting the concert of their lifetimes, it was like dousing an inferno in gasoline.

But then the curtains pulled back to reveal Rodrigo strutting onto the stage with effortless confidence — before succumbing to the song's nervous anxieties.

"And I'm so sick of seventeen/Where's my (expletive) teenage dream," Rodrigo snarled, her impassioned teen fans screaming the lyrics back to her, as they did with every one of the words she sang Tuesday.

"And I'm not cool, and I'm not smart/And I can't even parallel park."

Yeah, parallel parking is tough. But when it comes to encapsulating heartache and angst with such vulnerability and wit, Rodrigo is unparalleled among pop stars of her age (aside from the slightly more enigmatic Billie Eilish, of course).

True, she may have been a bit too blatant with the Swift worship on "Sour" — to the point that Swift received two songwriting credits, one of them issued after Rodrigo's album was released. (Paramore's Hayley Williams also received one after "Sour" came out.)

But Rodrigo's lyricism is already on the verge of masterful, meticulously plotted and poignantly phrased, yet always heartfelt, natural, direct. Swift has inspired countless artists with her craft, but no one on the pop A-list has come this close to matching her gifts.

And despite what her biggest hits may suggest, Rodrigo doesn't just sing about exes either. "Brutal" was followed by "Jealousy, Jealousy," a biting critique of the burden young women feel to seem flawless in the social media age. "All I see are girls too good to be true/With paper-white teeth and perfect bodies," she sang. "Wish I didn't care."

And for "Hope Ur OK" — initially performed with her primarily female band, before they bowed out to let Rodrigo on acoustic guitar guide the song to its strong finish solo — she poignantly turns her largely confessional songwriting style outward. "She was brought into a world where family was merely blood," Rodrigo sang about a middle-school friend ostracized for "who she loved." "Does she know how proud I am she was created to unlearn all of their hatred?"

Not every song has lyrical knockouts like those, but that's where Rodrigo's natural stage presence — informed by her pre-touring acting career on Disney Channel and Disney+ shows — came into play.

Tuesday night, she performed "All I Want," a pre-"Sour" ballad she wrote for her character on the Disney+ series "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series," and what it lacks in the rich specificity of her more recent material, Rodrigo compensated for with passion and pathos.

She brought that same intensity to two covers from seminal, pop-punk embracing female artists who came before her. Rodrigo clearly relished Avril Lavigne's dancing wordplay from "Complicated," and backed by that sharp band, she brought appropriate rage to Veruca Salt's "Seether" — a favorite song of her mother's, who, she revealed Tuesday, is a Wisconsin native. (Rodrigo spent many summers in the state growing up, she said, and there were several Wisconsin relatives beaming and cheering her on from the balcony.)

But it was the four biggest hits — "Drivers License," "Good 4 U," "Traitor" and "Deja Vu" — that were the undisputed highlights in a night full of them.

Rodrigo made "Good 4 U" great live, building up the tension ahead of the song (and show's) big finish by leading the crowd through multiple singalongs of the bridge.

The bridge and the crowd's deafening singalong was also the bright star of "Deja Vu," but live, Rodrigo smartly brought more emotional maturity to the material.

"Traitor" was even more raw live than on the recording, with Rodrigo tapping into the end-of-the-world devastation of a first love's betrayal — with one teen boy's face covered in tears as he sang along Tuesday.

And then there was "Drivers License," which Rodrigo boldly played third in the set, instead of saving it for the end. With Rodrigo trying to piece together her broken heart at the piano, spotlights swayed through the tinsel covering the stage behind her, resembling car headlights driving in the distance. "Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me," Rodrigo belted. "Cause you said forever now I drive alone past your street."

The love in "Drivers License" may not have lasted forever, but Rodrigo's song — and others now and others to come — certainly will.

And for the lucky 3,500 fans at one of Rodrigo's first shows, the memory of this night will last forever, too.

The takeaways

• In a nod to her album cover art, it seems Rodrigo is collecting stickers from her tour, grabbing a few from fans up front that she slapped on a stage riser next to stickers she received at previous stops.

• So why didn't Rodrigo do an arena tour? Besides not having all that much material — she played every "Sour" song, another original, two covers and still clocked out at 60 minutes — Rodrigo also suggested in a Los Angeles Times interview that she didn't "want to skip any steps." That may have irritated some fans who failed to score tickets, but I find it commendable. I remember seeing Ariana Grande play a Milwaukee arena for only the second full show of her career, and she clearly lacked the confidence she needed for that task, and was stuck with a busy production that didn't play to her strengths. Grande quickly learned to handle arenas with ease, and Rodrigo is clearly ready to do the same.

• The Rave informed ticketholders that they could begin lining up for the show at 3 p.m. Tuesday — but fans started lining up on a nearby sidewalk at 8 p.m. Monday, WISN-TV (Channel 12) reported, to score prime spots in the front.

• The last song that played on the speakers before "Brutal" began was, appropriately enough, "Olivia" by One Direction, with fans singing along to every word (as they did when Harry Styles' new single "As It Was" was played over the speakers about 30 minutes prior).

• This exuberant crowd hardly needed any warming up, but Gracie Abrams did a fine job setting the mood with her own take on broken-hearted pop. Recently collaborating with the National's Aaron Dessner (who co-produced and co-wrote much of Taylor Swift's last two albums), Abrams is poised for her own ascent.

The setlist

1. "Brutal"

2. "Jealousy, Jealousy"

3. "Drivers License"

4. "Complicated" (Avril Lavigne cover)

5. "Hope Ur OK"

6. "Enough For You/1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back"

7. "Happier"

8. "All I Want"

9. "Seether" (Veruca Salt cover)

10. "Favorite Crime"

11. "Traitor"

12. "Deja Vu"

Encore

13. "Good 4 U"

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story indicated Taylor Swift received two songwriting credits for "Sour" after the album's release. One credit was issued when the album was released; the second credit was issued after its release. This story has been corrected.

Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Olivia Rodrigo lives up to impossible hype at Milwaukee show