8 Best Moments From Olivia Rodrigo’s Headlining Gov Ball 2025 Set: ‘I Want Them to Hear Us in F—king Manhattan’

About an hour after The Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat” blasted through the mainstage speakers as part of Rodrigo’s pre-show playlist, who would’ve guessed that another 1980s classic would make its way onto her setlist… and with an IRL surprise.

Following a moving performance of “favorite crime,” a starstruck Rodrigo introduced rock legend David Byrne for a duet rendition of Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House.” Rodrigo and the now 73-year-old rocker, wearing a white tee and red overalls (which perfectly matched Rodrigo’s two-piece set), flawlessly switched off lines of the 1983 smash and happily danced around the stage. Throughout the performance, Rodrigo even took part in some of Byrne’s signature choreo.

After kicking off the final set of the night with her GUTS deluxe single “obsessed” followed by fan-favorite “ballad of a homeschool girl,” Rodrigo slowed it down with what could only be described as a holy trinity of back-to-back ballads.

Sitting at a grand piano, “Vampire” was the perfect way for Rodrigo to tee up the trio of slower songs. By the time its climactic bridge hit, the crowd’s vocal cords were warmed up for what was to come: the song that started it all and her first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “drivers license” (Rodrigo said that she thinks “of my life in before and after this song”). For the final song in this little trio, she went with “traitor” a clear fan-favorite from her debut album considering that the crowd was just as loud, if not louder, than they were just one song before.

“I wrote this song when I was falling in love with this boy,” Rodrigo cheekily shared with the crowd before going into “so american,” a GUTS (spilled) track that fans believe was written as a love letter to her boyfriend, English actor Louis Partridge.

“Maybe you’ll understand this feeling when you’re first falling in love with someone, and everything you do, you just think of them,” she continued. “When I wrote this song, I was driving in the car, thinking of this person, and I started humming this chorus, and it turned into this song.” We’ll take the Louvia crumbs.

Other than a shortened setlist, there were a few key differences between Rodrigo’s festival set and last year’s GUTS tour. For one, the on-screen visuals are slightly different, although they definitely still fit within the GUTS world.

Her background dancers were also cut from this gig, giving the spotlight to just Rodrigo and her all-female band. She performed a stripped-back rendition of “pretty isn’t pretty” with just her strumming her acoustic guitar, and later equipped herself with just an electric guitar for a solo performance of her heart-wrenching SOUR ballad, “enough for you.”

Some encores don’t give what they need to give, but Rodrigo’s was not that. It was a couple minutes after 10:30 p.m. when she wrapped up her performance of “deja vu” — which seemed to be the final song of the night after Rodrigo exited the stage. That was until a stunning visual of her gracefully sitting in a white slip dress popped up across the big screen, which was soon engulfed in digital flames.

By 10:37 p.m., Rodrigo re-emerged, equipped with a red megaphone adorning her first and only outfit change of the night: a red and white cropped baseball tee that read “New York City Never Looked So Blue.”

The songs in the encore were just as satisfying: “brutal,” “all-american b—h,” “good 4 u” and “get him back!”

With him taking the stage just an hour before her, Rodrigo took a minute out of her set to give a shoutout to her longtime friend and fellow artist, Conan Gray.

“I love him so much, he’s my best friend,” she excitedly told the crowd ahead of singing “enough for you” (a SOUR track she revealed is her “favorite song she’s ever written”).

Gray delivered a mainstage set complete with props and a costume to match the sailor aesthetic of his upcoming album Wishbone, for which he just released its first single, “This Song.”

“Have you listened to his new song yet?” Rodrigo asked the crowd, which immediately erupted in screams. “That’s the right answer. I love him so much and I love playing music.”

It became a GUTS tour tradition for Rodrigo to lead fans in a primal scream fest during her performance of “all-american b—h” — and that tradition continued for her Gov Ball set’s penultimate song.

“There is so much s—t to be pissed off about in the world today,” she said before getting into the song’s bridge. “When I tell you ‘go,’ I want you to scream as loud as you can and let it all out. Okay? I want them to hear us in f—ing Manhattan.” (The festival takes place outside the city in Queens, N.Y.).

Probably channeling their emotions that came with the delay, downpour, mud and muggy weather that came earlier in the day, the crowd certainly followed directions. When Rodrigo tee’d up the screams with the first line of the bridge and and said “go,” the stage went completely black — and for a good 10 seconds, all that could be heard were the most guttural of screams. Not that the rest of the show wasn’t, but this was a true moment of group catharsis.

Encore