All-American pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo lit up BST Hyde Park on Friday night with a 19-song set and a surprise guest appearance from Ed Sheeran, all framed by a golden sunset that felt scripted just for her.
Last night in Hyde Park, Olivia Rodrigo did what only a rarefied class of pop stars can do: made 65,000 people believe they were the only ones she was singing to. Her chain link tassels glittering against a technicolour sky, and a surprise guest that sent TikTok into cardiac arrest, the 22-year-old Grammy winner gave London the kind of night that lodges itself in the cultural memory—and stays there.
BST Hyde Park is no stranger to once-in-a-generation headliners, but Rodrigo’s set felt unusually cinematic. Maybe it was the golden-hour sunset. Maybe it was the purple cowboy hats waving in rhythm with Driver’s License. Maybe it was Ed Sheeran, who casually walked out in jeans and a white tee to duet The A Team like it was open mic night. But by the time she whispered, “London, you’re my favourite city,” the audience already knew.
Rodrigo’s BST debut was less concert, more coronation. And if you weren’t there, the scroll of social media the morning after read like a communal hangover from a dream no one wanted to wake up from.
“This is like my dream gig!” she beamed, visibly overwhelmed by the sea of Gen Z superfans (and at least one very enthusiastic James Corden). Her setlist, a serotonin rush of heartbreak anthems and pop-punk scream-alongs, opened with Bad Idea Right and closed—after 90 relentless minutes—with Good 4 U and Get Him Back, fireworks in tow. But the moment that detonated X (formerly Twitter) came mid-show, when Rodrigo paused, grinned, and said, “I want to introduce one of my favourite Brits and one of the best songwriters of all time.” Out walked Sheeran. Cue hysteria.
Even in a festival season defined by surprise pairings, this one hit different. The pairing made sense: two generational songwriters, both capable of reducing you to tears in four chords or less. But watching them strum The A Team together under the Hyde Park trees felt like watching a scene from a movie that already knows it’s going to win an Oscar.
Elsewhere on the bill, BST proved again why it’s one of the most compelling summer festivals in the world. The Last Dinner Party, swathed in rococo drama and Roman columns, owned the stage with a set that included Mirror and Nothing Matters. girl in red, fresh from a deeply personal rehab journey, turned her trauma into triumph, debuting Hemingway with raw, devastating honesty. “I wasn’t going to live anymore,” she said at one point, before launching into the track that many fans are already calling her best yet.
If Rodrigo gave us the anthem-heavy climax, it was flowerovlove who gave the visual gag of the afternoon, popping out of a giant white stiletto before launching into New Friends. Wearing a Harry Styles tee and zero pretence, she brought easy confidence and star quality that will likely land her a headline slot before long.
Other early highlights included BETWEEN FRIENDS’ breezy California cool, Caity Baser’s turbo-charged girl-power pop, and Katie Gregson-MacLeod’s confessional lyricism (she spotted the subject of Guest List in the crowd and handled it with the kind of dry humour that only a Scottish TikTok star could pull off). Ruti, Déyyess, and Florence Road rounded out a day so packed with new-gen talent, you could practically feel Spotify’s algorithms recalibrating in real time.
Rodrigo’s love letter to London was more than just a tour stop. It was a cultural checkpoint for the post-pandemic pop era, a celebration of vulnerability, camp, grit, glitter, and community. The crowd—one of the most emotionally literate in Hyde Park history—sang along to every word, cried on cue, and then cried again when it was over.
