Review: The image of burning candles lit a fire under Olivia Rodrigo’s fans. And then...

At 8:15 on Friday night, the giant video screen looming over the stage inside Spectrum Center started projecting the image of a set of lighted purple candles molded into the letters “G,” “U,” “T” and “S.”

And it was as if the earth had suddenly moved.

Thousands of girls and women screamed in unison as they jumped to their feet and started taking photos, some of themselves, some with their friends, some having handed their phones to the dads who brought them, all with the word representing the name of Olivia Rodrigo’s latest album and current tour in the background of the frame.

Then several minutes later, when on-screen the “T” candle toppled over into the“U” candle’s pool of melted wax, it set off another frenzy of screams.

Yup. Leave it to Rodrigo — the Disney Channel star turned pop-rockin’, f-bomb-droppin’, ex-boyfriend-mockin’ It Girl — to turn the normally tedious experience of watching candles burn into A Big Deal.

To be fair, this was an audience full of fans who had been fired up for a long, long time. Most had been holding onto pricey tickets to the sold-out Charlotte show for six months, which, if you’re, say, 15 or 16 years old, is a not-at-all-insignificant portion of your lifetime, relatively speaking.

But if you thought the collective screams for the candle-burning video were loud (like the fortysomething guy in front of me who I spied researching custom-fitted earplugs on his iPhone), you hadn’t heard anything yet.

At 8:40 p.m., when Rodrigo climbed a set of steps leading from beneath the stage up through an opening and onto it as she launched into show-opener “Bad Idea, Right?,” the group of girls who’d already been going gaga behind me commenced to shriek-singing along with her pop-punk-powderkeg of a hit.

This kind of rabid response — one I imagine was happening everywhere all at once inside the arena on Friday night — set the tone for the entire show ... and that tone could only be described as eardrum-shattering.

And Rodrigo didn’t just approve of it. She encouraged it.

“I want everyone up out of their seats. I want you to jump. I want you to scream,” she shouted, after stomping her chunky black boots and thrashing her long brunette strands through her second song: “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl,” another punky hit.

Later, she split an otherwise-quieter stretch of the concert — between emotive ballads “Logical” and “Enough for You,” sung while seated in the crook of a 10-foot-tall, purple-lighted crescent moon that did a slow loop above the entire floor section — by specifically requesting screams again. First from the upper level (loud, long), then from the lower level (louder, longer), before laughing and saying, only half-jokingly: “Y’all are gonna have some raspy voices tomorrow.”

Even as the show neared its homestretch, more than 90 minutes in, Rodrigo couldn’t get enough.

“You guys know the drill,” she told the crowd of 17,000 as she put her right-hook-to-societal-expectations anthem “All-American Bitch” on a brief pause before its big finish. “When the lights go on, you’re gonna think about something or someone that really f------ pisses you off, and you’re gonna scream your heart out and let it out. Are you ready?”

I don’t get angry when I’m pissed

I’m the eternal optimist

I scream inside to deal with it

Like, “AhhhhhhhHHHHHHHH”

(Cue 10 seconds of piercing, euphoric screams that had the earplug researcher in the row in front of me stuffing his index fingers into the holes on the sides of his head.)

Now, if all of this focus on the power of her fans’ lungs sounds like disdain or derision, make no mistake: It’s neither.

I say this all to underscore the passion of her following, the power she has over that following, and the way in which she uses that power. But not to discount her actual talent.

And her actual talent is considerable. Even if you’re not in her target demo and are only vaguely familiar with her growing collection of hits, you still might have heard — over, or in spite of, all the screaming — that Rodrigo has in three short years built a reputation as a remarkable songwriter and hit-maker.

In fact, the teen who broke big with “Driver’s License” is now a freshly minted 21-year-old woman already operating very near to the height of her powers. Maybe even at them.

Pretty much everything she’s put into her “Guts” show works.

On a macro level, the production resisted trying to bite off more than it can chew.

Although it had some of the elements of a rock concert, it didn’t rely on balls of flame or blasts of fireworks. Instead of dramatic costume changes, Rodrigo kept it simple by remixing outfits built around bralettes, boyshorts, miniskirts and fishnet. Save for the floating moon, more-elaborate staging and set-pieces were shunned in favor of creative camera setups, including one that hung above her while she sang “Making the Bed” while laying on her back; and another that pointed up at her through a plexiglass floor as she seductively writhed on her side during “Obsessed.”

In terms of the setlist — despite having just two albums plus that song from soundtrack for the new “Hunger Games” movie to work with — Rodrigo covered nicely thanks to a catalog that showcases her gift for songwriting while avoiding same-soundingness.

She commanded attention by grabbing an electric guitar to deliver a jolt of punchy pop-punk at the end of “Obsessed,” but just as easily captivated by playing a grand piano while singing the brutal breakup ballad “Driver’s License,” and the aching ode to childhood innocence “Teenage Dream.”

On top of all that, Rodrigo has an effervescent stage presence that at least feels authentic. It’s probably something she honed during her time starring in “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,” but needless to say, she’s got an expressiveness in her face — from the pouty lips to the wide-eyed wonderment — that comes most naturally to someone who cut their teeth on musical theater.

(Amusingly, Rodrigo’s only reference to “HSM: TM: TS” came as she teed up another heartbreak hit, “Happier,” by recounting its origin story: “This is a song that I wrote when I was on the set of the show that I was filming at the time, and I was in the middle of a scene and I just got an idea. I was like, Oooo! ‘I hope you’re happy, but don’t be happier.’ That could be kinda good, and so I lied to the director; I told him ... ‘I have to pee so bad’ ... and then I ran and got my phone and recorded the chorus to this song. So probably not my most professional moment of all time, but, you know, got this little tune out of it, so I can’t complain too much.”)

Perhaps more than anything, though, Friday night’s show felt like a celebration. For a few reasons.

It felt a little like a celebration of her 21st birthday, which was 2-1/2 weeks ago, but also a lot like a celebration of her achieving mental healthfulness. “When I was 18 going on 19, I thought that growing up was just the scariest, worst thing in the world. I’d cry on my birthday every year,” she told the crowd, before saying of turning 21: “I’m so happy, and I feel like I know myself so well.”

It felt a little like a celebration of International Women’s Day, which the Charlotte concert happened to fall on. But it also felt a lot like a more-general celebration of female empowerment, what with her eight dancers all being women, her five-piece band and her two backing vocalists all being women, and 95, maybe even 96 or 97% of the sold-out crowd comprising girls and women. (Opener Chappell Roan’s whole band was all-female, too, by the way.)

And it felt a little like a celebration of her personal success, but also a lot like a celebration of her devoted following.

As security concerns have increased due to a rise in bad fan behavior and as society has been somewhat warier of human contact in the wake of the global pandemic, there seem to be more and wider barriers going up between artists and concertgoers.

Yet there Rodrigo was, after closing her set with the fantastically feisty anthem “Get Him Back!,” charging down onto the floor to do a lap around the pit while brushing her own hand against a line of her fans’, collecting notes and feather boas and funky eyeglasses and knitted bags and hugs, with a broad smile plastered to her face the whole time.

When she finally completed her circuit, she turned to the camera that had been following her, mouthed “BYE” and “I love you,” and planted a kiss in the air about an inch from the lens.

Then she disappeared by way of an arena tunnel, followed into it by — what else? — the sound of thousands of satisfied screams.

Olivia Rodrigo’s setlist

1. “bad idea right?”

2. “ballad of a homeschooled girl”

3. “vampire”

4. “traitor”

5. “drivers license”

6. “teenage dream”

7. “pretty isn’t pretty”

8. “love is embarrassing”

9. “making the bed”

10. “logical”

11. “enough for you”

12. “lacy”

13. “jealousy, jealousy”

14. “Can’t Catch Me Now”

15. “happier”

16. “favorite crime”

17. “deja vu”

18. “the grudge”

19. “brutal”

20. “obsessed”

21. “all-american bitch”

22. “good 4 u”

23. “get him back!”