Olivia Rodrigo remembers her life in two parts: before she heard the Breeders’ “Cannonball,” and after, she told the crowd at Madison Square Garden on Friday night, when her Guts World Tour arrived in New York.
And that is how the ’90s alt-rock idols came to play the New York arena for the first time last week, 31 years after that song from their platinum 1993 album, “Last Splash,” charted on Billboard’s Hot 100.
Rodrigo’s camp initially approached the Breeders in September about opening some dates on the tour supporting her second album, “Guts.” “My first reaction was, Wow, that seems kind of odd,” the band’s bassist, Josephine Wiggs, said in an interview. “But after I’d thought about it for a while, I thought, ‘That’s actually really genius.’”
Kim Deal, the singer-guitarist who leads the band with her twin sister, Kelley, said she was surprised when they got the invite. “I’d heard ‘Drivers License,’ and I liked that a lot,” she said, referring to Rodrigo’s breakout 2021 smash.
Kelley wondered if it might be a mistake. “I thought, ‘Is she sure? Do they really mean us?’”
But Rodrigo made her enthusiasm clear when the shows were confirmed, reaching out personally to share her excitement. “She texted each one of us individually,” Kelley recalled.
