What to do after writing some of this centuryโs most devastating songs about the torment of breaking up? Write some of this centuryโs most devastating songs about the ecstasy of getting together.
With her first two albums โ 2021โs Grammy-winning โSourโ and 2023โs triple-platinum โGutsโ โ Olivia Rodrigo proved herself to be perhaps the most gifted of the many chroniclers of Gen Z romance to emerge in Taylor Swiftโs wake. She could convey the hot sting of betrayal, as in her smash debut single, โDrivers Licenseโ; she could channel the injustice of watching an ex somehow carry on, as in โGood 4 Uโ; she could deliver a sick burn like somebody handing out Halloween candy, as in โGet Him Back!โ (Because it deserves remembering: โHe had an ego and a temper and a wandering eye / He said heโs six-foot-two, and Iโm like, โDude, nice try.โโ)
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Yet on her thrilling third LP, โYou Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,โ Rodrigo, 23, turns to the pleasure that comes before the pain โ and, in a feat very few in pop music are ever able to pull off, ends up with a number of first-flush-of-love songs as potent as any breakup tune.
She opens the album with โDrop Dead,โ in which she compares a guy in line for the bathroom at a bar to an โangel on the walls of Versaillesโ โ an early sign of how high the emotional ceiling is here. In โStupid Songโ she cycles through a series of metaphors to describe her lovesickness โ sheโs a car without a brake, sheโs a heart made of melting wax โ before finding a simpler but infinitely more vivid way of getting her point across: โYou should feel how I feel when somebody says your name.โ (Chills.)
โMaggots for Brainsโ is a song about how useless she becomes โwhen my baby goes away,โ and letโs just take a second to savor the fact that Rodrigo is putting that title into the world less than four years after she was still a working Disney kid. The albumโs next tune, โU + Me = <3,โ is its high point: a euphoric promise of devotion that sounds like Sixpence None the Richer reborn as a Midwestern emo band. Itโs got two young lovers carving their names into car seat leather, and itโs got a girl trying to impress her boyfriendโs older sister with her cynical humor and her taste in yacht rock.
More important, itโs got these lines of pure poetry: โThey say modern loveโs a cruel endeavor / And to that I say, Fโ it, whatever.โ Kurt Cobain would be proud.
Working with her longtime producer, Dan Nigro, Rodrigo has expanded her stylistic palette to accommodate these new emotions; โYou Seem Pretty Sadโ pulls in chiming folk-rock and synthed-up new wave and even has a gorgeous wine-bar piano ballad, โLess,โ that might put the scare in Rodrigoโs pal Laufey.
The cover of Olivia Rodrigoโs new album.
(Geffen Records)
The album is structured to trace the arc of a relationship, which means that the second half dips into the heartbreak weโre used to getting from Rodrigo. But sheโs writing about familiar scenarios with new wisdom, drawing sophisticated conclusions about why people in love do the things they do (and donโt do the things they donโt).
In โThe Cure,โ which rides a strummed acoustic-guitar pattern that strongly recalls Smashing Pumpkinsโ โDisarm,โ she realizes a boyfriend canโt fix whatโs broken inside her; โBeggedโ examines the limits of one partnerโs willingness to look past the failings of the other. After hearing these songs, the happier ones at the beginning of the album reveal bits of shadow that Rodrigo has built into them to presage whatโs to come โ to presage what always comes.
Itโs fitting, then, that Robert Smith of the Cure โ perhaps popโs most jubilant gloommeister โ hovers over this LP like a patron saint: nodded to in โThe Cure,โ of course, but also โDrop Dead,โ where Rodrigo name-checks the Cureโs classic โJust Like Heaven.โ Smith himself turns up in โWhatโs Wrong With Meโ for a duet with Rodrigo in which the two learn to accept that love, in the end, might be what kills them.
โMy head is spinning and my stomach is sick,โ they sing, and neither sounds like theyโd have it any other way.