April Yu, 15, East Brunswick High School, East Brunswick, N.J.
April Yu, 15, writes that Olivia Rodrigo has “pioneered maturation over reinvention” on her sophomore album, “Guts.”Credit...Chantal Anderson for The New York Times
In a musical age of brassy new artists with the life span of a 90-day TikTok trend, Olivia Rodrigo’s story was meant to be over long ago. After her power ballad “Drivers License” went viral in 2021, she followed with her record-breaking album “Sour,” a half-melancholy, half-incensed collage of heartbreak and insecurity. Two years later, Rodrigo returns with her sophomore album “Guts” with more weapons in her arsenal. It’s not just six Grammy nominations, broken streaming records or mass critical acclaim talking — it’s Rodrigo herself, and she’s more pissed off than ever.
The album’s opening line, “I am light as a feather and as stiff as a board,” conjures images of a sleepover that takes a bloody turn — the perfect visual for a track that nosedives from embodying feminine perfection (“I am built like a mother and a total machine”) to swear words and 15 seconds of guttural screaming. Rodrigo turns her classic dry humor and self-deprecation into a hysterical feminist anthem, instantly shaping the unapologetic, lipstick-stained, vicious Riot-Grrrl world of “Guts.”
Through the rest of the album, it’s clear Rodrigo has learned to take shots at herself. Voice dripping with honeyed poison, Rodrigo indicts her social faux pas in “Ballad of a Homeschooled girl”: “I laughed at the wrong time, sat with the wrong guy / Searching ‘How to start a conversation?’ on a website.” Rodrigo also makes endless quips about her dating life; rapping about wanting to “break his heart / Then be the one to stitch it up” in “Get Him Back!” Rodrigo openly owns what society would dub her greatest shames: social anxiety and hookup culture. She reassures young women that girlhood is prime real estate for feeling every possible emotion at once.
Yet the insecure girl who created “Sour” has not disappeared — and herein lies Rodrigo’s true appeal. From pairing Dior dresses with Doc Martens to celebrating her chart-topping lead single “Vampire” with burgers on a grainy livestream, Rodrigo has nailed the duality of global superstar and teenage girl next door. In the ballad “Lacy,” Rodrigo describes her nearly romantic idolization of another girl; whether a nod to queerness, beauty standards or envy in the digital world, Rodrigo’s melancholy can’t help but make you relate on all three counts.
In a world where female pop legends are expected to don new personas for every album, Rodrigo has pioneered maturation over reinvention, unapologetically herself in theme and aesthetic. In the closing track “Teenage Dream,” Rodrigo ponders peaking young and her longevity in the entertainment industry. After 12 songs of smashing social constructs and her own worldviews, Rodrigo ends on this pinnacle of fragility — but for now, she doesn’t need to be more. Her story is just beginning.
