LIVE: Olivia Rodrigo — GUTS World Tour

By Nick Campos | NJC Creative

The Experience

Beautiful is probably the simplest way I can describe it. I was in the VIP pit, surrounded by some of the most welcoming fans I had ever met at a show. I made friends before Olivia even stepped onstage, and by the time the show started, it already felt communal. Then Olivia came out. Her choreography and stage presence have so much personality. Nothing feels like movement for the sake of movement. It feels like her. Watching her perform, you can see the distance between the Disney star people were introduced to and the artist she has grown into. But I think you can hear that growth even more clearly in her music.

Hearing songs like All I Want alongside making the bed, pretty isn't pretty, and scared of my guitar felt like a punch in the stomach. SOUR already showed how talented Olivia was as a writer, but hearing it beside GUTS makes the evolution impossible to ignore. It wasn't simply watching Olivia grow up physically. You could hear how she had grown emotionally through her music. And standing there listening to songs from different stages of her life, I realized something about my own.

I grew up too.

I grew up listening to Olivia, and somewhere between the songs I related to as a teenager and the ones I understand now, my relationship with her music changed. There are songs I once heard as simple heartbreak that now make me think about insecurity, jealousy, regret, identity, loneliness, accountability, and whether I actually understand myself as well as I think I do. Lyrically, Olivia is a beast. She has this ability to make insecurity, uncertainty, jealousy and self-doubt sound beautiful without making any of them less ugly to experience. And looking around the crowd, you could see that I wasn't the only person finding pieces of myself in her music.

There were kids crying. Teenagers crying. Adults crying. Thousands of people hearing the same words through completely different lives. And I think that's what made the show so special to me. I wasn't only watching Olivia grow up. I was realizing how much I had too.

From My Experience

There are artists who make me understand other people better. Olivia Rodrigo makes me question whether I understand myself.

making the bed

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the way I am because of my surroundings or because of my own doing. Maybe I'd be different if I tried something new. Maybe I'd be happier somewhere else. Maybe the people and places around me shaped parts of myself that I now struggle with. Or maybe I'm the one causing myself so much pain.

That's what making the bed means to me. But for me, it's more uncertain. Because then comes the terrifying possibility:

What if I really am the issue?

What if it was never entirely the other person? I've always been a very social kid. Growing up, I was friends with almost everyone. I've met people who are practically copy-and-pastes of each other, people who are completely unique, and people I simply don't get along with. But after enough friendships and relationships end, you start noticing the one person who was present in all of them.

Me.

And then I start looking for a pattern. I just don't know what the pattern is. Is it my ego? My mindset? Hidden trauma? Some reaction I learned a long time ago? Do I push people away? Do I choose the wrong people? Do I expect too much? Do I accept too little?

Am I making my own bed?

I've gotten so many things I wanted in life. But I've lost a lot of people on the way up. Sometimes it feels like the same sequence keeps replaying with different people. I meet someone. They become important to me. Something changes. I react. They react. Eventually I lose them. Then somebody new comes along, and somehow I end up asking myself the same questions. It becomes difficult to believe that everybody else is always the problem. But it's equally difficult to believe that I am. Sometimes I feel like what I say doesn't matter because I'm trapped in a replay, living through a looping sequence of consequences from choices I've already made. Sometimes I can recognize things about myself that I don't like, but recognizing them and knowing how to change them are completely different things.

What if I know I'm doing it and still can't stop?

Maybe I do want to change. Maybe I just don't know how. And sometimes blaming other people gives me an easier way out. But other people have genuinely hurt me too. I recognize when people use me. And sometimes I let them.

Because the alternative is losing them.

I've lost enough people that sometimes being useful feels safer than being left. I tolerate things. I make excuses. I allow people access to me that maybe they shouldn't have because an imperfect connection can feel less frightening than another absence. But if I know somebody is using me and I choose to keep them around, where does their

responsibility end and mine begin? That doesn't excuse what they do. It forces me to look at why I accept it.

And that's what making the bed does to me. It doesn't tell me everything is my fault. It does something much more uncomfortable.

It takes away my ability to confidently say that none of it is.

Maybe my surroundings shaped me. Maybe people hurt me. Maybe I hurt people too. Maybe some of my problems came from circumstances I never chose, while others are consequences of choices I did. Maybe there are patterns I haven't even recognized yet.

I don't know. Maybe I made my bed. Maybe other people helped me make it. Maybe I'm still making it.

And I'm terrified that one day I'll finally recognize the pattern and realize I've known how to change it all along.

scared of my guitar

Then there's scared of my guitar. This is something I've struggled with deeply. I never know when to leave. And when I finally do know, I'd usually rather not. Because what if this is it for me? That's a thought I'm almost embarrassed to admit, but it's one that lingers in my head more than I'd like. What if this is what I get? What if every mistake I've made, every person I've hurt, every bad decision I've made somehow led me here?

Maybe this is my punishment.

Maybe I'm supposed to accept a relationship that does me no good because the alternative is having no relationship at all. Being that self-aware inside of something that's hurting you is gut-wrenching. Because you want to know better. Sometimes you do know better. You can sit alone and admit everything that's wrong. You can recognize that you're unhappy. You can imagine what you'd tell somebody else if they described the exact same situation to you. Leave. But then it's your life. And suddenly leaving doesn't feel so simple. Because what happens after? What if nobody else comes? What if the relationship I'm settling for is the closest I'll ever get to the relationship I actually want?

What if this is simply it for me?

And that fear doesn't only exist in my romantic relationships. It exists in my friendships too. I've had a lot of friends throughout my life, but I've never really felt like I've had a best friend. Everyone always seemed to have their person. I was somebody's friend, but there was usually somebody else they would choose first. And I learned how to live in that position.

The back-pocket friend.

Close enough to be there when someone needs me, but never quite the person they reach for before everybody else. I don't complain about it much. Because again, I know what I think the alternative is. Being alone. I remember my graduation. There were people everywhere. Everyone was looking around for somebody. Their family. Their friends. Their person. People had someone they wanted to run toward. Someone to hug. Someone they needed to find in that crowd. And I didn't.

At my own graduation, I had no one to hug.

That's a strangely specific memory to carry, but I do. Because moments like that make loneliness feel physical. It's one thing to tell yourself that you're lonely. It's another thing to stand in a crowd surrounded by people you've known for years and suddenly realize you don't know who you're supposed to run to. And experiences like that change the way I approach relationships. They make settling easier. Because when you've convinced yourself that the alternative to an imperfect connection is having nobody, you become incredibly good at tolerating imperfection. You accept being second. You accept being convenient. You accept being the person someone remembers when their first choice isn't available. You tell yourself it doesn't bother you. Sometimes you even convince yourself that it doesn't. Because at least you're somebody's something. And that's where scared of my guitar hurts me. For me, the fear isn't simply admitting that a relationship isn't working.

It's admitting that I know it isn't working and still being more afraid of what happens if I leave.

When you're alone with yourself, there's nobody left to perform for. Nobody to convince. Nobody whose behavior you can analyze instead of your own feelings. It's just you and the truth you've been avoiding. Maybe I'm unhappy. Maybe I deserve something different. Maybe this friendship isn't fulfilling me. Maybe this person doesn't love me the way I need them to. Maybe I should leave. And then comes the thought that keeps me there:

But what if nobody else comes?

That's the part of growing up that I don't think I was prepared for. Realizing that sometimes loneliness isn't having nobody around you. Sometimes you can know hundreds of people and still wonder whether you're truly someone's person. And I think I've accepted less than I deserve because some part of me would rather be someone's second choice than nobody's choice at all. I'm trying to unlearn that. I'm trying to understand that being alone and being unwanted aren't the same thing. But I'd be lying if I said I completely believe that yet. Maybe one day I'll learn that I'm enough on my own. Maybe I'll stop measuring my importance by whether I'm somebody's first choice. Maybe being alone won't immediately feel like being unwanted. Maybe I'll learn that losing someone isn't always proof that I've done something wrong. And maybe one day I'll finally be able to look back at my high school memories fondly. Right now, some of them are difficult to revisit. There are beautiful memories there, but they're tangled with loneliness, insecurity, people I don't speak to anymore, versions of myself I don't completely understand, and moments where I desperately wanted to feel important to somebody. Maybe growing up means eventually being able to look back at that person without being angry at him. Maybe I'll understand why he accepted what he did. Why he stayed. Why he wanted so badly to be chosen. Why standing alone at graduation hurt him as much as it did. And maybe instead of being embarrassed by him, I'll finally have some sympathy for him. He was figuring it out.

I'm still figuring it out.

Maybe one day I'll have my person. Maybe one day I won't need one. Maybe one day I'll look back at all of this and understand exactly why it had to happen the way it did. Or maybe I won't.

Who knows.

pretty isn't pretty

Then there's pretty isn't pretty. Being a teenager isn't easy. Especially when you feel like you don't fit in. And for me, it wasn't because I didn't have the trendiest clothes or didn't know what everyone else was interested in. Sometimes it was because of my skin color. Sometimes it was my accent. Growing up, I had a difficult time fitting in with kids my age. It wasn't necessarily because we didn't get along. I had friends. I've always been social.

I just didn't look like them.

I wasn't tall. I wasn't athletic. I wasn't masculine. I didn't feel handsome. There was always another standard I felt like I wasn't reaching. And as a kid, I started resenting parts of myself that I should have never been taught to hate. I resented my accent. I resented my skin color. I was made fun of for both. And eventually, I didn't just wish those things were different.

I tried to erase them.

I tried bleaching my skin. I changed things about myself because some part of me genuinely believed becoming further removed from the person I saw in the mirror would make other people accept me more. That's what pretty isn't pretty means to me. This song isn't about makeup. It's about my skin color It's about how early racism can enter the way you see yourself. Even as kids, it was there. I constantly felt caught somewhere in the middle. I could feel too Mexican for the white kids and too white for the Mexicans. There never seemed to be a middle ground where I could simply exist without somebody having an opinion about what I was supposed to look like, sound like, or act like. And when you're young, you don't necessarily have the language to understand what that does to you. You just know you want to fit in. So you start looking for things you can change. My skin wasn't the only thing. My body became another one. Growing up, I struggled deeply with my weight and eating. As a kid, I was convinced I was fat. I look back at pictures now and see how thin I actually was.

I wish he could have seen what I see now.

But he couldn't. As I got older, my relationship with food and my body became even more complicated. There were periods where I binged, and there were periods where I severely restricted what I ate. I could look in the mirror and feel sick. So I tried changing myself again. I changed my hair texture. I tried making myself thinner. I kept believing there was another version of me somewhere that would finally be attractive enough. Maybe if my hair looked different. Maybe if my skin looked different. Maybe if I lost more weight. Maybe if I dressed differently. Maybe if I acted differently. Maybe if I were more masculine. Maybe if I could just become somebody else.

Then I'd finally be pretty.

But that's the trap. There is always another thing to fix when you've already decided the person underneath everything isn't good enough. You reach one goal and immediately create another. The standard moves. And suddenly you realize you haven't been chasing beauty at all.

You've been chasing permission to stop hating yourself.

Now, as an adult, I look at my heritage completely differently. I accept it. I love where I come from. I understand now that there was never something inherently wrong with my skin, my accent, or the parts of myself that made me different from the people around me. In that part of my life, I really was a victim of my surroundings.

I was a kid responding to what other people taught me about myself. And I wish understanding that now could completely erase what I learned then. But sometimes I still have those thoughts. Sometimes an insecurity creeps back in. Sometimes I catch myself looking at my body too critically or comparing myself to someone who looks nothing like me. Sometimes that younger version of me still gets a voice. The difference is that now I can recognize him. I can understand where those thoughts came from without automatically believing they're true. And maybe that's progress. Not waking up one day and suddenly loving every part of myself.

Not becoming so confident that insecurity never touches me again. Just finally understanding that a thought about myself isn't automatically the truth about myself. Because I spent years trying to become pretty enough without ever stopping to question who I was trying to become pretty enough for. The kids who made fun of me? The people I wanted to date? The people online? My friends? Myself? I don't know. You can change everything you're told to change.

You can lose the weight. You can change your hair. You can change your clothes. You can change the way you speak. You can grow up and finally become comfortable with the heritage you once tried to hide. And insecurity can still find another place to live. So when pretty isn't pretty enough, what do you do? Maybe that's when you finally have to stop asking how to become prettier. Maybe you have to ask why being pretty became the requirement for loving yourself in the first place. I know now that there was never anything wrong with being the kid I was.

I just wish he had known that too.

And even with everything I know now, sometimes that question still finds me.

When pretty isn't pretty enough, what do you do?

lacy

And that's where lacy comes in. I've definitely idolized people before. Not romantically. Not even necessarily because I wanted to be close to them. More like,

Damn. They really have it all. And at first, it's admiration. I notice the way they look. The way they dress. Their body. Their hair. Their personality. The way other people respond to them. The confidence I imagine they have. I start picking apart all the little things that make them seem so perfect to me. And eventually, admiration becomes comparison. Comparison becomes jealousy. And sometimes jealousy becomes resentment.

I start resenting people for things they cannot control.

That's difficult to admit because they haven't actually done anything to me. Their existence isn't an attack on mine. But sometimes it feels like one. I notice this especially around other Hispanics my age. And I don't completely understand why.

Maybe it's because the comparison feels closer. It's one thing to compare myself to somebody who looks completely different from me or comes from an entirely different background. I can create distance between us. I can tell myself we were simply given different cards. But when I see somebody who shares pieces of my background, somebody my age, somebody who looks like they could have grown up beside me, the excuses disappear. And suddenly I wonder: Why don't I look like that? Why don't I carry myself like that? Why don't people want me like that?

What do they have that I don't?

And it gets worse when it's someone connected to a person I used to talk to. When they move on, sometimes I don't just notice the new person.

I study them.

I look at their pictures. I notice their features. I notice the things they have that I don't. I wonder what that person sees in them that they couldn't see in me. And suddenly, this stranger who may not even know I exist occupies an embarrassing amount of space in my mind. I think about them constantly. Not because I hate them. Not because they've hurt me. But because somewhere along the way, I've turned them into an answer to a question I've been asking about myself. Why them and not me? And that's where lacy becomes uncomfortable for me. Because sometimes I don't know whether I want to be better than them or be them. I can admire somebody and resent them simultaneously. I can think they're beautiful while wishing I didn't. I can recognize that my jealousy is unfair while still feeling it.

I can tell myself that their beauty doesn't take anything away from mine and then immediately compare myself to them anyway. It's a constant war with myself. And the other person doesn't even have to participate. That's the strangest part. They can be completely innocent. They didn't ask to become my competition. I made them my competition. I created a version of them in my head where they're effortlessly everything I'm struggling to become. They're prettier. They're more desirable. They're more confident. They're more masculine. They're more interesting. They're more worthy of being chosen. And I don't actually know any of that. I'm comparing the most insecure, intimate understanding of myself to a version of another person I've constructed almost entirely from the outside.

Of course I'm going to lose.

Because I've created a competition where they get to be perfect and I have to be human. And that's where lacy connects so painfully to pretty isn't pretty for me. When pretty isn't pretty enough, you start looking for somebody who is. You find them. You study them. You idolize them. You resent them. You try to become as good as them. And every time you fail to become this impossible version of them you've created in your head, you punish yourself for it. Maybe lacy isn't really about the person I'm obsessing over at all. Maybe they're just the mirror I've chosen to hurt myself with.

Growing Up With GUTS

GUTS really is an album like no other. I think there's something beautiful about the fact that we can all listen to the exact same songs and hear completely different stories. Olivia wrote these songs from her life. I listened to them through mine. Maybe making the bed doesn't make you question whether you're responsible for your own pain. Maybe scared of my guitar doesn't remind you of all the times you stayed because being unhappy with someone felt safer than being alone. Maybe pretty isn't pretty doesn't take you back to being a kid who desperately wanted to change the things that made him different. Maybe lacy doesn't remind you of all the people you've turned into competition simply because you couldn't understand why you weren't enough. I hope they don't. But maybe you hear yourself somewhere completely different.

That's the beautiful thing about music. The song stays the same.

We give it meaning.

And as I've gotten older, GUTS has become less of an album about teenage heartbreak to me and more of an album about the terrifying realization that growing up means becoming aware of yourself. The good parts. The ugly parts. The things other people did to you. The things you did to yourself. And all the things you still don't understand. I said earlier that watching Olivia perform made me realize something:

I grew up too.

But growing up doesn't mean I suddenly have all the answers. If anything, growing up has given me more questions. Maybe that's part of it. Maybe growing up is finally becoming old enough to recognize the patterns you couldn't see before. To question the things you were taught about yourself. To recognize when you're hurting someone. To recognize when someone is hurting you. To look at the person in the mirror and understand that sometimes he deserves accountability and sometimes he deserves compassion. And to learn the difference. I'm still learning the difference.

There are parts of myself I understand now that I couldn't have explained as a teenager. And there are parts of that teenager I'm only beginning to understand now. Maybe years from now, I'll hear these songs again and realize I misunderstood everything. I actually hope I do. Because that would mean I changed again.

Olivia's songs will still be there. The words will still be the same. But I won't be. And maybe someone reading this heard themselves in one of the things I wish I had never felt. Maybe you know what it's like to wonder if you're the problem.

Maybe you've stayed because being alone seemed worse. Maybe you've looked in the mirror and wished you could become somebody else. Maybe you've looked at another person and hated them for having something you desperately wished you had. Maybe you've stood in a room full of people and wondered why nobody seemed to be looking for you. If you have, I wish I had something profound to tell you.

I don't. I'm still figuring it out too.

I'm sorry if you can relate.