From a surprise David Byrne appearance to an explosive encore, Rodrigo delivered a guts-spilling, house-burning headlining set at the NYC festival.
Olivia Rodrigo performs at the 2025 Governors Ball at Flushing Meadows Corona Park on June 7, 2025 in New York City.
Marleen Moise/Getty Images
Olivia Rodrigo is a machine.
While most artists would opt to take a break after touring an album around the world for over a year, Rodrigo wasn’t quite done after wrapping her GUTS tour last fall. In March, she took the stage at Lollapalooza Chilé — her first of a whopping 18 headlining festival sets she booked for 2025. A handful of Latin America gigs later, Rodrigo made her way back to the States for the second day of Governors Ball on Saturday (June 7) night.
Her first appearance at the New York City festival unfortunately didn’t come without obstacles — particularly for fans. Due to inclement weather, (heavy rain and lightning were forecasted for a few hours during the day), festival organizers announced that doors would be pushed from 11:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., leaving dozens of fans who arrived bright and early for a prime barricade spot to wait outside the gates even longer. When doors finally did open, a handful of afternoon sets were cut, while others were shortened and pushed.
Rodrigo’s main stage set moved from 8:30 p.m. to 9:25 p.m., immediately following Feid, who performed during her original set time on the nearby Kiehl’s stage.
When she finally hit the stage dressed in a sparkly new red two-piece set, Rodrigo controlled the crowd with a rock ‘n’ roll prowess we haven’t seen since artists like Avril Lavigne and Gwen Stefani toured in the early aughts. She effortlessly blended her pop-rock bangers with her somber ballads for nearly an hour and a half — keeping the crowd of all ages captivated whether she was strumming her guitar, playing the piano or dancing and jumping all over the stage.
The weather delays may have been rough, but they didn’t stop Rodrigo from delivering a set to remember. Here are the 8 best moments from her headlining set below.
Back to the ’80s With David Byrne
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.
A Holy Trinity of Ballads
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.
“So American” Lore and a Subtle Louis Partridge Shoutout
“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.
Stripped-Down Version of GUTS Tour
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.”
An Encore That Encore-d
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!”
A Moment for Her Bestie, Conan Gray
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.”
Perfect “All-American” Group Scream
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.
Rodrigo’s Gov Ball 2025 Setlist
- “obsessed”
- “ballad of a homeschooled girl”
- “vampire”
- “drivers license”
- “traitor”
- “bad idea right”
- “love is embarrassing”
- “pretty isn’t pretty”
- “happier”
- “enough for you”
- “so american”
- “jealousy, jealousy”
- “favorite crime”
- “Burning Down the House” (with David Byrne)
- “deja vu”
Encore
- “brutal”
- “all american b—h”
- “good 4 u”
- “get him back!”
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