The scream on the opening track of Olivia Rodrigo’s new album lasts twelve seconds Guts. In ‘All-American Bitch’ the twenty-year-old singer gives free rein to her anger, but in real life she holds back, she sings. “I don’t get angry when I’m pissed / I’m the eternal optimist / I scream inside to deal with it”. The verses of the song are sweet, soft, acoustic, but the choruses are loud, distorted, pop punk. Having to present the perfect picture on the outside, while being destroyed on the inside. The sharpness with which Rodrigo describes such universal experiences has quickly made her one of the most popular musicians of the moment.
Rodrigo’s debut single ‘Drivers License’ (2021) broke several streaming records. The accompanying album Sour – which she wrote when she was seventeen years old – spent five weeks at number one on the US album chart and won a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album. At her first Dutch concert, last year in a sold-out Afas Live in Amsterdam, the mostly young visitors had tears streaming down their cheeks with relief.
On break-up record Sour Rodrigo alternated sensitive ballads with the occasional pop-punky outlier; on Guts that balance is reversed. The emotions are still just as raw, the themes – insecurity, jealousy, social discomfort, relationships – just as recognizable. But now there is more room for fun, for a cheeky laugh, a witty remark and for the electric guitar. “Our goal was to make something more playful; an album that does not take itself so seriously,” says the singer in an interview for the cover of a music magazine Rolling Stone.
Take the dryly funny ‘Bad Idea Right?’, in which Rodrigo stubbornly admits that against her better judgment she ends up in bed with her ex again. Or ‘Get Him Back!’, in which she wants to win back an old love as much as she wants to get it back: “Wanna kiss his face / with an uppercut”. Her tone is playful, sometimes a bit teasing, with a wink, somewhere between ‘Chaise Longue’ by Wet Leg and ‘Mickey’ by Toni Basil.
Delve into the past
On Sour you could already hear the influence of female rock artists from the noughties such as Avril Lavigne, The Veronicas and Paramore. Now Rodrigo delves further back in time, into her mother’s record cabinet, which she keeps for her daughter every morning Fontanelle (1992) by punk rock band Babes played in Toyland. In songs like ‘All-American Bitch’ and ‘Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl’ you hear echoes of bands like Hole and early No Doubt. Not only because of the alt-rock sound from the nineties, but also because of the way she expresses her frustrations about the world and her place in it, in biting shout-along choruses: “Each time I step outside, it’s social suicide / Wanna curl up and die !”
Of course there are also ballads in the style of Olivia’s breakthrough hit: frank and hyper-specific but still (or because of that) recognizable. And it is poignant when she wonders on ‘Teenage Dream’ whether her best years are already behind her: “When am I going to stop being great for my age and just start being good?” Even if that confusing phase of growing up is now an old pain for the listener, Rodrigo manages to bring the stinging uncertainty of the time back to the surface.
After a promising debut, Olivia Rodrigo delivers Guts a strong second album, a snapshot of a chaotic phase of life in which you wonder whether everything will always remain such a mess in your head and in your life. “They all say that it gets better, but what if I don’t?” she sings.
Guts answers that question: don’t worry, the improvement has already started.
Also read the profile Who is Olivia Rodrigo