Famous new artist, Olivia Rodrigo, received backlash based on her past drama with her co-worker, Joshua Bassett. Rodrigo fans complain about the ticket prices for her upcoming SOUR tour and continue to express their opinions about the problematic drama going on since January of 2021. Rodrigo boasts about her upcoming tour for her album, “SOUR”, but fans who attempt to purchase tickets have started to notice that tickets for good seats have a higher-than-expected price range. Rodrigo remains unresponsive to all of the backlash and fans look forward to seeing her response about the situation.

Over a year ago Rodrigo released her hit debut record, “Drivers License”, and it became an instant hit on the infamous social media app, TikTok. Fans loved the song quikly realizing it related to the singer’s relationship with her rumored ex-boyfriend, Joshua Bassett.  Rumors started going around about Bassett and Rodrigo dating, then they broke up in the summer of 2020, and not long after, Basset jumped into a relationship with ex-Disney channel actress, Sabrina Carpenter. Since then, Rodrigo fans have accused Bassett of cheating on Rodrigo with Carpenter, and unfortunately, they started to take it too far.

When Basset released one of his songs, “Crisis”, he revealed in the past, he got sexually abused as a child.  Rodrigo fans have crossed the line by saying “Joshua deserved to get sexually abused as a child”. 

Even though Rodrigo cannot control her fans’ actions, since the whole drama situation began, Rodrigo never came out and asked her fans to stop all of the unnecessary hate continuing over the past year. People who like both Bassett and Rodrigo have stated that Rodrigo should apologize to Bassett for letting the hate spiral.

“Honestly I feel like the fans took it out of proportion, even though you don’t like somebody you don’t need to send death threats. Joshua can sort it out the way he wants to sort it out, if you don’t like it that’s not his problem. I think the fans are doing too much,” freshman Giselle Grayson said.

In December of 2021, Bassett came out to other news sources and stated the hate has messed with his mental health over the past 11 months. Since then, Rodrigo received seven Grammy nominations for Best New Artist, Album of the Year (Sour), Record of the Year (Drivers License), Song of the Year (Drivers License), Best Pop Solo Performance (Drivers License), Best Pop Vocal Album (Sour), and Best Music Video (Good 4 U).

“I would see Tiktoks with like 50 million views and ten million likes saying, ‘If I ever see that kid on the street I’m going to [explicit] kill him.’ It’s hard to see that [and] be living in New York and walking down the streets,” Basset said.

“I feel like it got way out of hand. He does not need to be getting those death threats. If you disagree with something that’s going on between Olivia and Joshua, then keep it to yourself, death threats are not needed,” freshman Zaniyah Gresham said.

The young singer announced in December, of 2021, that she’s will tour from April 2 to July 7. Due to the small sizing of her venues and high tour price tickets, Rodrigo’s fans expressed their concerns and emotions Her supporting fans try to buy tickets but then they start to notice tickets for two or more people cost over$ 1000. One of her shows for Los Angeles can range from $400 to $4,000. Supporters feel like the venues remain too tiny for her to charge over $2000 for her debut tour because the album includes only 11 songs. It takes about 35 minutes for the album to run from start to finish, so altogether the concert would last one to three hours at most. Rodrigo has recently told her fans that they will get more opportunities for tours in the future as her music career advances.