The Problem Olivia Rodrigo Can’t Solve
The singer’s sophomore album makes a persuasive case for rock’s rebirth as musical theater, as she comprehends life’s unavoidable obstacles.
Have you ever loved a song without knowing what it means? That rarely happens when I listen to Olivia Rodrigo. The 20-year-old pop star has conquered the world by singing about unruly emotions with the precision of a court reporter. The songs on her new album, Guts, offer tidy thesis statements about the nature of heartbreak, declaring, “Love’s embarrassing” (on “Love Is Embarrassing”) or “Love is never logical” (on “Logical”). The fantastic “Get Him Back!” describes being torn between lust and hatred for an ex—a messy situation that Rodrigo renders as a tight sitcom. “I wanna meet his mom,” she moans, “just to tell her her son sucks!”
Rodrigo broke out in 2021 with a single (“Drivers License”) and a debut album (Sour) that were well timed for an age of post-metaphor, post-ambiguity pop songwriting. Likely influenced by both Taylor Swift’s talent for saying what she means and social-media’s flattening of psychological complexities into labels and diagnoses, Sour’s songs diagrammed the micro-moods of a teenage breakup. Rodrigo, an actress on a Disney’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, performed each lyric with an appropriate tremble, snicker, or sigh. Assisted by her main producer, Dan Nigro, the music alternated between quiet-then-heavy ballads and upbeat pastiches of punk and emo classics.
When someone’s debut is so self-assured and fully formed, what do they do next? Guts is less an evolution than a fortification, making a persuasive case for rock’s rebirth as musical theater. She and Nigro pushed themselves to be bolder, funnier, more varied. They wring drama from Rodgrido’s tabloid-scrutinized biography while connecting it to the broader experience of growing up in the internet age as a young woman. As with Sour, you’re constantly nagged by the sense of having heard specific elements in these songs before—but the juxtapositions feel fresh, and Rodrigo ladles out lots of personality. Here and there the work feels a little too easy, but Guts certainly doesn’t lack substance. It’s just that all the substance is on the surface.
The best tracks are the rambunctious ones. Sour’s millennial pop-punkiness has given way to Gen X rock geekery. On the churning single “Bad Idea Right?,” you’ll hear flashes of the Pixies, Pavement, and even Metallica while Rodrigo, with cheeky self-awareness, talks herself out of talking herself out of a hookup. The aforementioned standout “Get Him Back” takes the formula of Beck’s “Loser” and adds squealing, overlapping vocals to achieve a symphony of brattiness. “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” summons the socially anxious energy of a ’90s teen flick to capture a modern shade of maladjustment: Rodrigo mentions “searching how to start a conversation on a website.”
The slow songs have oomph and writerly wisdom as well, though they’re also where Rodrigo’s literalism can grate. Particularly, “The Grudge”—a “Drivers License” redux—and the fame-is-pain confession “Making the Bed” sound cloying and generic. “You must be insecure, you must be so unhappy / and I know in my heart / hurt people hurt people,” she sings to an enemy on the former song, passing off a therapy cliché as insight. A better ballad is “Logical,” whose fast tempo and minimalist soundscape approximate the feeling of a nervous spiral. Rodrigo sings of erroneously treating relationships as math: “Two plus two equals five / and I’m the love of your life,” a perfect conceit for an artist constantly trying to reconcile head with heart.
The final two songs on the album veer toward the didactic, but in a moving, almost desperate way. The blurry guitars of “Pretty Isn’t Pretty” recall the Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979”—a great example of a song in which mood matters a lot more than message—as Rodrigo sings of disordered eating, prescriptions, and “shitty magazines.” Her critique of beauty culture isn’t new, but it’s something that Rodrigo’s young and very online listeners could always stand to hear. Then comes “Teenage Dream,” in which she anticipates the challenges of adulthood. “When are all my excuses / of learning my lessons / gonna start to feel sad?” she asks. “Will I spend all the rest of my years wishing I could go back?”
These are tough and smart questions for a young pop star, or a young anyone, to ask themselves. And Guts itself, in a way, stands as a reassuring lesson about navigating the anxieties of aging. Facing the pressure of following up a white-hot debut, Rodrigo stayed true to herself, avoided coasting, and pushed her craftsmanship. But what really gives the album its bite is that Rodrigo has identified a problem even she can’t solve: Comprehending life’s obstacles is not the same as avoiding them.