“I’ve got 7 guitar solos throughout the set, which is kind of insane – and that’s totally from her wanting that”: With Olivia Rodrigo, Arianna Powell is staking her claim as a guitar hero for a whole new audience
The seasoned session player made her name with the Black Eyed Peas and Halsey, but it’s the Olivia Rodrigo gig that’s given her incendiary playing a spotlight on a global scale. She breaks down her whirlwind journey so far
Monster tapping runs. Wild whammy dives on a Jackson Soloist. Impeccably sculpted leads worthy of Brian May. All are staples in an Olivia Rodrigo show, and Arianna Powell is the virtuoso responsible for melting the faces – and capturing the hearts and minds – of a young impressionable crowd, who might just end up the next generation of guitar heroes.
It certainly seems like Rodrigo has set herself the goal of reviving guitar music in the pop sphere. A student of riot grrrl and ’90s alt-rock, the 22-year-old brought the Breeders out on a recent tour, guested with No Doubt at Coachella and cited Rage Against the Machine as a major influence on her last record. Her latest record, guts, is a trojan horse, all catchy riffs and punk powerchords wrapped up in pop hooks and witty odes to adolescent breakups.
In translating that to the stage, Rodrigo has enlisted the talents of guitarists Daisy Spencer and Powell, who deliver all the energy of a rock show, with solo spotlights, riff breakdowns and pogoing powerchords. And it’s making an impact.
“We all get DMs on Instagram from fans that are stoked and wanting to play,” Powell tells Guitar World. “And I can only hope that inspires them, right? [Olivia] has so many fans who are young girls and young women. It’s important to see that.”
Powell can attest to the importance of representation. She grew up around guitars, but it wasn’t until the movie Josie and the Pussycats – about a fictional all-women group who expose an evil record label – that her own passion for the instrument was ignited.
“That’s when I really officially started playing. Then my dad was like, ‘Oh, you gotta check out this band, The Go-Go’s – that’s the original girl band.’ I started learning riffs from their first record.”
As a teen, Powell played everything from System of a Down to Alanis Morissette, Metallica to Norah Jones. She developed a deep appreciation of the melodic stylings of Brian May, David Gilmour and Eddie Van Halen, while a degree in jazz guitar from Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University trained her in the solo chord-melody styles of Joe Pass and Johnny Smith – something she incorporates in her own material.
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Powell was well-positioned to turn her hand to any guitar playing that came her way. But she needed to leave Pittsburgh behind to land the big gigs.
“I would play stand-in gigs every week. And when we were on break, they would play live performances from Beyoncé or whatever. I remember seeing Bibi McGill, her guitar player at the time, playing a guitar solo with her, and just thinking, ’I want to do that. I want to play with these big stars.’
“I looked up some Bibi McGill articles, and found out what she did. She was like, ‘I moved to LA, just started playing in LA. You get noticed. People know who you are. They call you.’”
With just her guitars for company, Powell made the leap, and word of her talents did indeed get around. She was snapped up for major shows with Black Eyed Peas, Chris Brown, Nick Jonas, and, most recently, Halsey.
But the Olivia Rodrigo gig is the one that will cement her name in mainstream guitar circles. Powell is this generation’s Jennifer Batten, Nita Strauss, Wendy Melvoin. The guitar wing-woman to an iconic frontperson, reaching millions of eyeballs – not least with a closing headline set at the UK’s iconic Glastonbury Festival. And as she tells us, the journey began with a whirlwind – and just kept going…
When did you first start working with Olivia Rodrigo?
“I started playing with her in the very beginning. She had released her big song driver’s license, and I got a call to play her first SNL performance – which was actually her first real performance with a band ever. It went over so well. It was the same weekend she released sour, the album, and that just absolutely blew up. So from there, I stayed on.
“I did the sour tour, and then I had my daughter, so I left for quite a bit of time. I wasn’t around for her guts promo, or a lot of the guts world tour. I came back at the top of 2025 when we performed Fire Aid and now all the festivals that we’ve been doing this year in South America and UK, Europe.
The only note I’ve ever gotten about technique is, ‘Just be more virtuosic.’ Like, ‘OK! I’ll be shreddy!’
“I left and came back to a different vibe, because with sour we were playing much smaller venues, like Radio City. We weren’t doing arenas or these massive festivals. So it was a completely different vibe. And it’s much more of a rock show – guts is much more of a rock album. sour is a bit more singer-songwriter. It feels like two different gigs in some ways.”
Olivia loves guitars. Does she request certain arrangements or techniques?
“She doesn’t request specific techniques, but she does love to feature the guitar, which is really cool. Especially since I’ve been on, she’s extended certain solo sections. She’s added guitar solos.
“I think I’ve got, like, at least seven guitar solos throughout the set, which is kind of insane, and that’s totally from her wanting that. The only note I’ve ever gotten about technique is, ‘Just be more virtuosic.’ [Laughs] Like, ‘OK! I’ll be shreddy!’”
How much input do you have on parts you play?
“All the solos are mine, and a lot of the parts are mine, like, especially deja vu, there’s like these slidey things that I’m doing. Those were synth parts in the track, but I’ve taken them over as a guitar moment. There’s a lot of really cool guitar parts on the record, like in love is embarrassing and pretty isn’t pretty. It’s maybe 50/50.
“Her music director is Stacy Jones – he played in Veruca Salt and he had his own band, American Hi Fi. He MDs Miley Cyrus, and he has a really cool approach where it’s like we’re in the ’90s and we’re an actual band. It’s not just MDs sending us the stems of the MIDI or whatever. He’s actually like, ’No, play what you play.’
“There were moments where, for example, the happier solo that I play, no-one asked me to play a guitar solo there. One day I just came in and I just thought, ‘Oh, it would be cool if a guitar solo was here,’ because that part of the song was just a string section. There has been lots of room for creativity.”
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You recently played the closing headline set at Glastonbury, one of the biggest music festivals in the world, and you were shredding solos up there. Was that at all nerve-wracking?
“We’ve been doing big festivals since the beginning of the year, so I was not thinking too much about stakes. I was just enjoying the performance. And Robert Smith was a guest at the performance, and he was so cool.
“He loves performing – that really inspired me and my energy for that night. The collective energy of the band that day was really infectious.”
When did you find out the Robert Smith collaboration was going to be happening?
“We found out in Nashville when we were rehearsing for Bonnaroo, which ended up getting canceled. But Stacy, our music director, came and told us, and was like, ‘This is very secret – you cannot tell anyone, but he’s going to be joining us.’
“And I swear to God, I started crying. Like, I started tearing up. Because I’m a huge fan, especially those guitar parts. Like I love, love, love, love, love, love, love the guitar parts, specifically in those songs, specifically Friday I’m in Love. So I was just so stoked to get to actually play that with the artist.”
You nailed those parts – and the tones, too. So what’s in your rig for the dates with Olivia at the moment?
“I’m playing a Kemper, and I’ve mostly just got two profiles going on. Amp-wise, I’ve got a Friedman BE-50 for my more saturated stuff and my lead tones, and then I have a Two-Rock Traditional clean amp for my cleans and slightly saturated tones. And I try to keep that pretty consistent across all of the songs, because I’ve done it before where I’ve used different amps for different songs, and it’s a little bit overwhelming.
“I have five guitars. I’ve got a Charvel SoCal HSH with a Floyd Rose and a Jackson Soloist, then a Gibson Dove acoustic and a Fender Acoustasonic Jazzmaster.
“I’m absolutely obsessed with my Gretsch Silver Falcon – it’s maybe my favorite guitar ever. I feel like it encompasses so much of who I am as a player. I have this part of me that’s very into Chet Atkins and solo guitar, and then I have the part of me that’s always loved punk rock and always loved great rock solos and playing pop parts.”
I was watching Turnstile’s performances from this year and just thinking, ‘Holy s**t, this is so cool. They’re playing Jacksons’
How did the Charvel come into play?
“The Charvel is a funny story – my tech was like, ’Ari, I think you should play Charvel.’ And I was like, ’No, that’s not really my vibe.’ I had my Fender American Strat that I had been playing on gigs for years. I had it on sour, I had it with Halsey, I had it with Black Eyed Peas, and I did a tour with Chris Brown years ago.
“And then I went home, and my husband, the same day, was like, ‘I think you should get this Charvel.’ And I was like, ‘What? Why are you guys both telling me to get this guitar?’ I went into rehearsal, and I was like, ‘Maybe reach out.’ They sent it to me, and I just absolutely freaking fell in love with it.
“The tone is so great: it’s shreddy, but also it does the Strat thing, which I need it to do on certain songs, like good for you. And I love playing whammies. With the Floyd Rose, I was like, ‘Oh, this is fucking awesome.’ Now I’m just going crazy with that. On my band introduction, and on the bad idea, right? guitar solo, I’m using that.”
From there, you got into the Jacksons.
“When the summer shows were coming up, I was starting to get really inspired by this band Turnstile. Everyone in Olivia’s band is a huge fan – Olivia herself is a huge fan of Turnstile. And so I was watching their performances from this year and just thinking, ‘Holy shit, this is so cool. They’re playing Jacksons.’
“There’s also this indie band that I’ve loved for a while called Dehd – the guitar player is playing this obnoxiously bright, lime green Kramer. It’s so fun to have these shredder guitars in these different contexts, whether it be an indie band or a pop band, it’s taking it away from your traditional ’80s hair metal band. I just thought, ‘That’s really a departure from anything I’ve ever played on a gig, but I think it would be a really sick vibe.’
“So, yeah, I got the Jackson Soloist, which is cool because, again, it has a Floyd Rose, and it has the ebony fingerboard, which is a little bit snappier than my Charvel, so I appreciate that.”
How did Olivia and the rest of the band react when you started turning up with shred guitars?
I started playing this tapping line where I’m going across all the strings. The front-of-house guy was just like, ‘Whoa, what was that?!’
“The Charvel is a little bit more understated, so people didn’t really mention it… except they did when, for the bad idea, right? solo, which is this very Jack White-inspired Whammy solo, I started playing this tapping line where I’m going across all the strings. The front-of-house guy was just like, ‘Whoa, what was that?!’ The guitar, so oftentimes, inspires you to play other things.
“What’s funny about the Jackson is that – like I was talking about that band Dehd – I wanted to have something really bright and almost obnoxious. They sent me their red one, but it wasn’t just red – it was a hot red. It was super-bright to the point where it was like, ‘No… you can’t…’ [laughs] It was so loud that it got cut, so I got a white one. But people were stoked. Everyone was like, ‘Yeah, that’s sick. That’s different.’”
You mentioned the bad idea, right? solo where you’ve got that Whammy pedal-esque sound, but you’re at the front of the stage for that lead. How are you achieving that?
“Initially, I had a real Whammy pedal on my ’board, because I like the hybrid Kemper/pedals situation. But there’s a choreographer on this gig – they want to feature you. They want to have you come out. So, we nixed the actual Whammy, and we’re using it in the Kemper, and now my tech is behind me doing it.
“Initially they were going to automate it, because they had done that in the past. And I was like, ‘No!’ because I feel like, then it’s not interacting. I just like the idea of it being real.”
What advice do you have for guitarists looking to move into session work?
“To be a working guitar player, you have to strike the right balance of having your own perspective and sound and approach and really developing a strong sense of who you are, but also being really good at reading the room and reading what the artist wants, and trying to merge those two together – have some kind of relationship and some kind of symbiosis between who you are as a player and the kind of artist that you are and the kind of artist that they are and what you can bring to them. I think that’s what’s going to make you the most valuable.”
Mike has been Editor-in-Chief of GuitarWorld.com since 2019, and an offset fiend and recovering pedal addict for far longer. He has been writing and editing for guitar publications including MusicRadar, Total Guitar and Guitarist for over 15 years, and recording and performing in original and function bands for two decades-plus. During his career, he has interviewed everyone from John Frusciante to Chris Cornell, Matt Bellamy and Billy Corgan. His writing also appears in The Cambridge Companion to the Electric Guitar. In his free time, you'll find him making progressive instrumental rock as Maebe.
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