There’s more rock here too than on her debut.
On “Vampire,” the album’s rock-operatic lead single that recently topped the Hot 100 and is likely to score numerous Grammy nominations, she roasts a “fame-f-er” of an ex who lives in a “castle built off people you pretend to care about” “Get Him Back!” has her plotting revenge against (and maybe longing to reunite with) a preening rich guy who displays her like a trophy.Īs those lines make clear, Rodrigo’s flair for melodrama has grown only more vivid since “Drivers License.” But “Guts” showcases a sense of humor that “Sour” merely hinted at the album really comes alive at its funniest, as in “ Get Him Back!” and “Bad Idea Right?,” both Gen Z dating satires where you can hear her actor’s background in pitch-perfect line readings that shift between comic registers on a dime - from naturalistic to screwball, faux-earnest to deadpan. As on Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” - just one of several sophomore LPs that “Guts” evokes, along with Hole’s “Live Through This” and Paramore’s “Riot!” - Rodrigo intertwines her tales of social-professional disillusionment with stories of romantic betrayal. Indeed, Rodrigo’s bitterest discovery here is that, for all its perks, megastardom turns out to be a real disruptor of one’s ability to connect person-to-person. Today, the 18-year-old has 2021’s top debut album and is nominated for 7 Grammys. Goes another key lyric from “Making the Bed”: “I got the things I wanted - it’s just not what I imagined.”Īwards How Olivia Rodrigo went from Disney princess to pop queen: ‘I’ve only ever seen myself as a songwriter’Ī year ago, Olivia Rodrigo was a Disney actor with a knack for songwriting. Other tunes describe punishing female beauty standards (“ Pretty Isn’t Pretty”), the quarter-life crisis of a fresh-faced prodigy (“ Teenage Dream”) and Rodrigo’s general unpreparedness for Hollywood schmoozing (“ Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl,” in which she tragically/hilariously recounts “searching ‘how to start a conversation’ on a website”). “I’m grateful all the time / I’m sexy and I’m kind / I’m pretty when I cry,” she sings, each line heavier with resentment than the last.
But its enormous success invited an entirely different level of scrutiny, such that Rodrigo opens the 12-songs-in-39-minutes “Guts” with “All-American Bitch,” an alternately wistful and punky song about the impossible balancing act she feels compelled to pull off as a woman entering young adulthood in the spotlight. 1 singles in “Drivers License” and the thrashing “Good 4 U” and brought plaudits from Billy Joel and Cardi B.
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