Olivia O’Brien is back on stage after five years without a headline tour. At her Detroit stop on her Pixie tour, Olivia brought nostalgia, tears, and hype to the show. 

The opening act, Maya Donovan, stepped on stage, and the audience was captivated by her melancholic vocals and musical talent. Singing songs like ‘Georgia the Ceremonialist,’ ‘Salami,’ and a few unreleased tracks, Maya played keyboard and harp. Her unique lyricism, such as ‘damaged like Salami, hits like a tsunami,’ brings a fresh perspective to subjects like aging, dating, and finding herself after loss. Maya’s songs are real and raw, without idealizing her thoughts and emotions. 

After Maya Donovan, Olivia O’Brien took the stage with her signature purple hair and a new prop, her fairy wings, to sing one of her singles from PIXIE, ‘I Always Say I’m Leaving. Throughout her set, Olivia alternated between happy and sad songs to keep her fans on the same emotional rollercoaster she was on. Before singing sadder songs, Olivia made dad jokes with the crowd to lighten the mood, then delivered a gut-wrenching performance of ‘Here, Alone Again’ and ‘Blip’. She even performed a medley of her older songs like ‘RIP’, ‘NOW’, and ‘Tequilawine’.

Later in the show, Olivia confesses to her fans that she has terrible taste in men before singing ‘The Masochist’, then transitions to another playful but bleak song, ‘Girl Just Be Alone’, where she tells herself to stay single to avoid more heartbreak and trauma. Before she performed ‘Icarus’, Olivia told the crowd that she intentionally makes mistakes during her shows, like singing the wrong lyrics, to reject the overly curated, perfect world and encourage fans to be more imperfect. 

While performing ‘What Happens Now?’, Olivia lets her band shine with brief solos. During ‘Quarter Century Blues’, she cried while singing the lyrics. Fans screamed the lyrics, and the song served as a cathartic therapy session. Before leaving the stage, Olivia did a fake encore before her last two songs, ‘hate u love u’ and ‘Josslyn’.

The PIXIE Tour is a tour for the girls and the people that support them, as well as a testament to how far Olivia has come in her music career and how much she’s grown since she started. Olivia O’Brien may be known to the public as the girl who writes sad songs, but to the fans, she’s someone who’s just like them.