Recommendations of the Editorial team
Olivia Rodrigo is far more than a little sad on her third album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. Across 13 tracks, she portrays all the beautiful, ugly and heartbreaking feelings that real, adult love brings. It’s been three years since Rodrigo’s last release, Guts, and in that time she’s not only gotten older, but also wiser. Their music reflects this hard-won maturity. She opens up a new sound palette and continues to push her songwriting forward. Here are our most important impressions of the new project.
Rodrigo has proven time and time again to be a masterful writer of broken ballads and bitter breakup anthems. But on “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” she delves into the gray areas of romantic relationships. She no longer screams about blatant betrayal like on “Sour” or shoots sharp arrows at an ex like on “Guts.” Instead, Rodrigo creates an unsettling unease that runs through the entire album.
On “Maggots For Brains,” she describes separation anxiety with specific lines like “Everything feels moldy / Like the fruit that’s in my fridge.” The devastating double of “Less” and “Cigarette Smoke” are gentle-sounding ruminations on the end of a relationship in which she comes to hard realizations: “If loving me means saying ‘Babe, I think this is the end’ / Well I guess I wish I wish I wish / You loved me less” – and admits: “I resent you / For not being brave.”
Love of rock
We knew Rodrigo was a rock savant for a long time – even before “GSIL” came out. Think of her “Deja Vu” reference and later collaboration with Billy Joel, how the “Guts” opener “All-American Bitch” was inspired by Rage Against the Machine, or her performance at the 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, where she honored her friend Jack at the induction of the White Stripes. We saw a meeting of minds between her and David Byrne last year – not once, but twice – during GSIL, a breathtaking one Duet with The Cure frontman Robert Smith contains.
But the rest of this great album shows how deep her lifelong love of rock really runs. Liv is clearly a New Wave girl now: She nods to Modern English on “Purple” (an “I Melt with You” refrain that inevitably burns itself into the brain), while the glittering synths of “Expectations” sound so Devo circa “Girl U Want” that she should be wearing an Energy Dome and partying with Booji Boy. And if “u + me =
Unlike “Sour” and “Guts,” which felt like collages of their experiences and deeply personal feelings, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love” tells a complete relationship story—beginning, middle, and end. It’s the first time Rodrigo has written like this: with a fully developed plot in mind, fueled by real heartbreak and what she calls her first “big adult relationship.” The album is split into an A-side and a B-side: the first half captures the early butterflies (“Drop Dead”), the excitement of falling in love (“Stupid Song”) and the full immersion in love (“Honeybee”). The second half explores the crash and eventual end of a relationship.
Successful collaboration with Dan Nigro
Rodrigo took the brief seriously – she wanted to tell a tightly woven, linear story, and she worked with Dan Nigro to ensure that it unfolded in a clear and action-driven manner. The dramaturgy, coupled with the track order and the interweaving of the songs, builds a journey of ups and downs. This is a quantum leap in her storytelling – and makes “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love” her most complete album to date.
In 2020, producer and musician Dan Nigro was scrolling through Instagram when he spotted a video of Rodrigo singing her then-unreleased “Happier.” He was so excited that he sent her a DM and asked about collaborating – and soon they had formed an unbeatable partnership. Rodrigo and Nigro worked on “Sour” and “Guts” and brought out the best in each other.
But “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love” is their collaboration at its absolute peak: it shows how good the two have become at nailing a sound, cranking up the production and delivering an album that couldn’t come from anyone else. The references to The Cure, New Wave and bands of the eighties never seem forced or exaggerated or too stuck in the past. Songs like “Maggots For Brains” and “Expectations” are shining examples of how the pair reinvent past sounds without making them sound like mere imitations – both tracks have a foot firmly in place in today’s pop landscape. The album as a whole is convincing as a coherent collection of sonic experiments – and as proof of the Nigro Rodrigo magic.
Robert Smith understands her
For Olivia Rodrigo, Eighties New Wave is the book of love – the ideal of how real an emotional connection can be, on the sublime heights of “Just Like Heaven” or “I Melt With You”. But he also embodies the knowledge of how far one can fall. She’s always been a die-hard Cure fan, which is why it’s a real accolade to get a guest vocal from the God of Melancholy himself: Robert Smith sings on “What’s Wrong With Me”. This is a sign of his respect and admiration for her. “I’m slightly overwhelmed by how effortless it all is for her,” Smith said after their performance at the Primavera Festival last weekend. “It seems so easy, so natural – and I’m not a really natural performer.” Olivia, in turn, made the confession of a true supporter: “Robert has set my life to music for as long as I can remember.”
No one knew this duet was coming until Primavera weekend – Smith didn’t even inform the rest of The Cure until they had closed the festival as headliners on Friday night. “What’s Wrong With Me” is a synthpop goth track in the spirit of “Japanese Whispers” or “The Head on the Door”. Maybe love will never be The Cure for Olivia – but The Cure will always be true love that never lets her down.