Two years on from the lavender-hued world of SOUR, her debut album, Olivia Rodrigo now dwells in a darker shade of purple on the cover of her sophomore album, GUTS, released 8th September. Having established her tenacious grip on themes central, but not exclusive, to the teenage experience, she has garnered a mass following of young listeners and is one of the most popular songwriters at work today. Despite this popularity and critical success, her songs are regularly dismissed by more ‘sophisticated’ music enjoyers as overplayed, juvenile, written for adolescents and lacking in the emotional depth required by older listeners. In GUTS, Rodrigo demands more respect. Felicity Cook shares her thoughts on the highly anticipated album.
A complex body of work, both sonically and lyrically, the album attests to Rodrigo’s growing artistic capability and versatility.
GUTS opens with All-American Bitch, a punching example of modern pop-punk with its title taken from Joan Didion’s 1979 book of essays The White Album. The song plunges in and out of heavy, punk-inspired sound, sonically reflecting its central theme of wavering bitterness and growing anger towards expectations of perfection, of being the ‘eternal optimist’, ‘grateful all the time’, of pain and suffering not being taken seriously. This theme culminates in a deft reference to Lana Del Rey’s lilting pop-rock ballad Pretty When You Cry. Lyrics drip with saccharine irony, Rodrigo’s Phoebe Bridgers-esque screams sound simultaneously rooted in horror and joy. The song is brimming with excellent technical juxtaposition and presets the skill at play throughout the rest of album.
The album’s radio primed singles, Bad Idea Right? and Vampire, follow. These two vastly different songs neatly display the two sides to Rodrigo’s musical coin. Bad Idea Right? is upbeat and slick, exhibiting Rodrigo’s wit with darkly funny, lipsync-able lyrics about the thrill of doing something you, and all of your friends, know is wrong: going back to your questionable ex. Vampire, however, is built from the same material as Drivers License, the gradually explosive piano ballad that shot Rodrigo to instant fame back in January 2021.
Slower, darker, angrier; this is Rodrigo at her best, using a pop-culture reference (she does, of course, belong to a generation who grew up on the Twilight franchise) as a metaphor for the complexity of being in an abusive relationship that drains you of life and vitality.
Rodrigo has a skill for taking distressing, confusing experiences and making them accessible, comprehendible.
The rest of GUTS continues to flip this coin, spiralling in teenage angst, ascending in mature self-reflection. Slower songs such as Lacy and Teenage Dream are cutting self-analyses in which Rodrigo does not hesitate to recognise and criticise her own ‘jealous eyes’, her own ‘rotten mind’ as well as the flaws of others. Making The Bed is a shining light on the album, in which Rodrigo grasps and toys with an incredibly recognisable self-hatred and frustration, tiredness with one’s own victim complex. She creates an evocative, visceral ballad that evidences her capacity to write well and cut deep, deeper than catchy tunes that are tailored to go viral on TikTok. Whilst Get Him Back! (which I’ve already seen featured in endless videos on the platform), Love Is Embarrassing and Pretty Isn’t Pretty are not the most sonically original songs, they set themselves apart with a new form of ironic lyricism very much curated by and for Gen-Z. ‘Everything I do is tragic’, Rodrigo writes in Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl, ‘Every guy I like is gay / The morning after I panic / Oh God what did I say?’.
The songs on GUTS reach for a sense of nostalgia, echoing a time many of their listeners won’t have actually lived through. The songs sound like other songs, like this Avril Lavigne song or that Alanis Morissette song, and many will dismiss them purely for this reason. But it is Rodrigo’s writing that sets them apart from others. Lying beneath the catchy hooks, beneath Rodrigo’s screams and belts, is a sensitive meditation on teenagerhood, girlhood, growing up and facing the true agony of love and heartbreak. The album does not encompass the most experimental or ground-breaking of themes, but when explored in such a refreshing manner, it makes for powerful listening, no matter your age.
Felicity Cook
Edited by Natalie Howarth
Image: GUTS Official Album Cover
Comments