Olivia Rodrigo is rocking a custom Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent Goldie on tour
St. Vincent co-wrote Obsessed, a ‘secret track’ from Rodrigo’s Guts album.
Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Acrisure Arena
Pop artist Olivia Rodrigo is capturing millions of young fans, and like it or lump it, she’s doing so with guitar-led music that could well influence a new generation of music fans to pick the instrument up themselves.
Rodrigo is currently on her Guts tour, which is in support of her 2023 album of the same title, and has been playing a stunning Ernie Ball Music Man – a St. Vincent Goldie with a purple paint job, to be specific.
The guitar, first launched in 2021, is a three-pickup solid body model, which upgrades some features from her 2016 original signature. Most notably, it swaps three DiMarzio mini-humbuckers for a custom-made type with gold foil tops routed to a five-way switching system.
It also has Okoume body construction, and a roasted figured maple neck with a reverse headstock. St. Vincent herself also addressed the guitar’s iconic shape at its 2016 launch, stating that it was sculpted to be comfortable when played by women. She wrote online at the time that there was “room for a breast or two”.
This shape is one of the reasons why The Last Dinner Party guitarist Emily Roberts also plays with a St. Vincent signature. “I wanted to use the St. Vincent ones because I think she’s iconic and having a guitar that’s made by a woman is quite rare. They’re also designed so that they fit a woman’s body – the shape of it is really light so that it doesn’t hurt your shoulders when you play, and I think a lot of guitars aren’t designed with that in mind,” she said during her Guitar.com interview earlier this year.
Rodrigo has been captured using her Goldie – customised to match the purple aesthetic of her album – to perform song Obsessed, which was originally a ‘secret track’ released on the red vinyl version Guts. The track was also written with St. Vincent herself, also known as Annie Clark.
Watch Rodrigo play the model below:
View all of Olivia Rodrigo’s upcoming tour dates via her official website.