This is the text conversation I had on the morning the Sour Tour went on sale. Emerging superstar Olivia Rodrigo had announced her first ever tour and put the entire thing on sale on the same day. And rather than play venues fit for her popularity, the tour was booked as 100% underplays, and was bound to sell out immediately, creating a lifeline (gold rush?) for professional ticket sellers they have desperately needed since COVID hit the concert industry hard.
No, my sister-in-law did not get tickets that day for my niece and her best friend. The tickets would come much later.
At Christmas, I told my niece that if she wanted tickets to the show, she’d have to go wait in line at the box office, likely for many hours, awaiting a release of production or tour holds. I was informed by my brother that it was her last week of school and she couldn’t skip because of finals. So I told her that I’d see if I could come down and help them out.
That’s how I ended up sitting in front of the box office at the Arizona Federal Theater in downtown Phoenix, in the 100-degree shade, for nearly 8 hours. At 11AM, we were told that the box office would be open at noon and that the show was sold out (we know). At noon, we were told the box office would open at 5PM instead and that the show was sold out (we know). At this point, everyone in the line left, except for me, maintaining the first spot in line in the crazy heat. It’s brutal out here!
I had brought a chair and water and I bought more water, and then the venue came by to hand out bottles of water to those waiting in the GA Pit line as well as those of us in the box office line. At 4PM, my niece and her friend got to the venue to wait with me which allowed me a chance to go get more water!
By 5PM, the line was about 25-30 people deep. The box office blinds went up and they told us the show was completely sold out and they wouldn’t be releasing any tickets and we should try StubHub or SeatGeek. This was literally the first time I’d ever heard a box office tell me to use a third party reseller!
A few people left. Not us! About 20 minutes later, the venue General Manager came by to tell us that there is no possibility that there will be any tickets. They’re not going to release more, the tour has no holds, there’s no tickets at all. We should leave, there are absolutely no tickets whatsoever! He then told us to try StubHub or SeatGeek because that’s the only place where there are tickets. What the fuck, Arizona Federal Theater? Are you in league with the professional scalpers?
At approximately 6:00, someone scooted past the line of people and asked if there were tickets for tonight. The woman at the box office started saying “actually we just put some in the system” and I was fucking pissed. I immediately slid over to the window and said “excuse me but there’s a line of about 40 people here waiting for tickets” and the guy slinked away — scared of me I imagine — and then the woman at the box office said there are 6 seats and I pulled out a credit card and said “I’ll take as many as you’ll give me and then I’ll pass em down the line.” She sold me all 6!
I was so annoyed at the theater staff for all of this, but the girls were super excited, as were the 2 sisters who were just behind us in line. We were left with a single ticket and we found the next person in line who was willing to take one ticket. The tickets weren’t transferable so we agreed to meet back after running back to our cars and taking a minute to find food and now we had a ragtag Olivia Rodrigo crew.
And the tickets we got after all of this were incredible. They were clearly house seats, 5 rows off the pit, dead center. Holly Humberstone opened, and while she seems like a lovely person and she has some nice songs, a lot of what she was trying to do was lost in the cavernous ugly black box that this theater turned out to be. It was hard to deciper the lyrics and the mix of her live vocals with the backing tracks seemed off.
Now, last week I went to and wrote about Silk Sonic in Las Vegas which was a no-phones show. This was decidedly the opposite. As the lights went down for Olivia Rodrigo to take the stage to the guitar riffs of album opener “Brutal,” what must have been every single patron in the house took out their phone to capture the moment she would appear in a dress with a heart shaped top declaring herself “Happy and Healthy,” a nod to a song we’d hear later. And while I declared that no phones kept the crowd engaged at Silk Sonic, 5000 phones didn’t stop this audience from being the same. I guess it’s an all-or-nothing proposition.
And the screaming wouldn’t stop for the next 80 minutes. Every single lyric of every single song (not the covers) was sung or shouted with glee by a deafening band of excited teenagers. Some accompanying adults spent the show glumly sitting in their seats, only coming to life for the pair of covers she’d perform (Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” and No Doubt’s “Just a Girl”), while others were up the entire time creating a wonderful family memory of shouting “where’s my fucking teenage dream” or “I still fucking love you” or “like a damned sociopath” — I’m sensing a trend –along with their children.
This was definitely more of a rock show than a pop show — only one costume change is a clue to that. There was also a moment when she stood at the front of the stage with her acoustic guitar, the curtains closed behind her and she sang a few songs solo — well, with about 4400 backing vocalists. “Hope Ur OK,” “Enough For You” and “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back” gave us a quiet moment before the band returned for her future showstopper, “Happier.”
I say future showstopper, because while she has the star power, the songwriting chops and is clearly a talented vocalist, she still has some room to grow. “Happier” has the potential to be a grand epic, and while it was arranged that way, she’s not quite there yet. Her vocal limitations were made obvious on “Just a Girl” which she attributed only to Gwen Stefani (not No Doubt and in a move that struck me as supremely ironic considering the band’s history), which sadly came across as bad karaoke, especially considering at one point she forgot the words and stopped singing. I wish for a lot of reasons that she was still playing Veruca Salt’s “Seether” in her sets — I really want my niece to get obsessed with female rock bands of the 90s. “Just a Girl” seems like such a basic choice — it’s as obvious as a Captain Marvel fight scene.
Eventually, we got to the raucous singalong of “Deja Vu,” the rocker with enough lyrics about Billy Joel that I think it’s safe to play his music to my teenage niece and tell her it’s important background for truly understanding the song. Olivia left the stage momentarily as the band began the lead-in to “Good 4 U,” her Warped Tour ready rocker — just ask Paramore about their time on that circuit — which concluded with butterfly shaped confetti, all printed with lyrics from Sour songs, creating an instant souvenir for those not willing to wait in the hour-long merchandise lines.
All across America, parents have been paying hundreds of dollars for their kids to see this show, with tickets in San Francisco, our home base, selling for upwards of $500. That’s a lot of money to watch 8000 phones watch Olivia Rodrigo, but your kids will probably be very happy to be yelling along with their newest hero. Maybe try waiting in line for eight hours instead — if it worked for us, it might work for you.
