GUTSOlivia Rodrigo’s second album is a lyrically developed and confident follow-up SOUR, consistently navigating the topic of being a young twenty-something woman in the 2020s. Rodrigo clearly knows what she’s good at and nailed it.
Although GUTS has been criticized as a showcase of “sweet girl power”, it misses the very essence of what Rodrigo is trying to portray on this album. Tracks such as “all-American bitch” and “lace”, formerly a drawing from Joan Didion’s 1968 essay Leaning towards Bethlehem, demonstrate Rodrigo’s isolation from the paradoxical and unattainable standard to which she is held. “I am made like a mother and a perfect machine” contains the age-old reductive binary, but she finds herself wanting to play into this feminine ideal, “the Bardo reincarnated.”
Switching between shamelessly brash confessional appeals and commentary on young womanhood is emblematic of Rodrigo doing just that; even in the album’s track listing, she makes the seemingly opposite seem compatible.
Rodrigo’s strengths undoubtedly lie in larger pop-punk anthems like “Vampire,” “Bad Idea, Right?” and “bring him back!” She demonstrates a command of disarming frankness and frank lyricism reminiscent of the pens of Lana Del Rey and Lily Allen. She manages to embody the painful confusion, frustration and anger of grief, confessing, “I want to meet his mom / Just to tell her that her son sucks.”
While it’s not a groundbreaking, musically seminal album, it’s pop music done well. Not only because it has the necessary ingredients of catchy hooks and ear-pleasing harmonies to sing in the shower, but because it’s also lyrically resonant. Rodrigo did not fall into the trap of a successful first album, releasing a follow-up solely about the incredible search for new fame or meeting celebrities. Rather, she uses her experiences with big picture perceptions and failed, messed-up relationships to create an album that contains both the insults we’d all like to say and embodies the acute feeling of being humiliated and humiliated in her youth. .
Rodrigo ironically navigates her confusion with such precision that it allows her music to speak to countless shared experiences and feelings. This is what good pop music should do, and its music is complete with stretch-and-release hooks painted in a commercially viable purple punk rock.
“Olivia Rodrigo” by Rocor is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
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