Plot Twist
Olivia Rodrigo set out to record an album of simple love songs. What she ended up with is something far more ambitious.
Olivia Rodrigo - You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love
“I’ve lost the thread among the vines
And hung myself in storylines
That tell a tale I never would allow.”
- Joe Henry, “You Can’t Fail Me Now
When you’re in the throes of new love, it’s all you can think about — so naturally, when Olivia Rodrigo found herself head-over-heels for some fella, she thought she’d make an album documenting it. The facts quickly got in the way of the story she was trying to tell; her romance curdled, but her inspiration bloomed. Now, on the heels of two of the most addictive singer/songwriter albums of the past decade — Sour and Guts, both bruising, sharp-tongued chronicles of teenage angst — Rodrigo is back with her most emotionally nuanced, creatively ambitious project yet. It’s called You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl so in Love, a perfect title that speaks to the conflict within: over the course of 13 songs, Rodrigo captures every painful detail of a swooning romance that turns, eventually, to bitter disappointment.
It’s an impressive feat, and for a couple of different reasons. The first is that it highlights Rodrigo’s growing confidence as a record-maker. Her previous albums are both sparkling collections of songs, but here she’s thinking narratively and conceptually; not only is the record neatly divided into two acts, the love songs and the sad songs, but she peppers the former with savory foreshadowing. Notice how many of the love songs use the imagery of sickness; “I thought I’d found the antidote,” she sings as the sad side begins. This is thoughtful, careful storytelling.
But it’s also impressive for how it broadens Rodrigo’s emotional palette — something that Guts, for all its strengths, didn’t do. Her first couple of albums favored depth over breadth, delving into the nexus of emotions centered on rage, resentment, and self-loathing. Here, for the first time, she is ebullient: Leadoff “Drop Dead” is dizzy with infatuation, while “Stupid Song” struts with a lovestruck swagger. She’s such a strong writer, though, that even the most seemingly straightforward songs reveal layers of complexity: “Drop Dead” boasts in how a mismatched Pisces and Gemini can make it work, a confidence that seems romantic at first but foolhardy by the album’s end; meanwhile, “Stupid Song” glosses over its own admission of love’s insanity.
Rodrigo’s broadened emotional palette comes with a whole new range of sonic reference points, as well. For the third album in a row she’s working with boon collaborator Dan Nigro, the producer who helped channel her affection for 90s and early 2000s pop-punk and tart, guitar-based emo. The crunch of power chords is missed here, but it’s to Rodrigo’s enormous credit that she prefers adventure over repetition. And besides, her taste remains unimpeachable: You Seem Pretty Sad conjures the colorful swirl and frenzied pulse of 80s New Wave, most effectively on “Maggots for Brains” and “u + me = <3,” songs that are at once featherweight and propulsive. With its thumping beats and police siren synths, “My Way” replicates the punky attitude of prime No Doubt. The album’s wildest moment is the freewheeling, robotic funk of “Expectations,” a late-album surprise that spikes imperial-era Madonna with a twist of Devo.
Of course, there are piano ballads. Rodrigo’s pensive turns are sometimes maligned— there are too many of them, they’re too slow, they kill the momentum— yet they provide some of the clearest proof that she sees herself in a lineage of singer/songwriters, their formalism conveying a devotion to craft. It’s true that the third song, “Honeybee,” though evocative and haunting, is a speed bump for the album’s flow. But "Less” is winsomely jazzy, the first Rodrigo piano tune that feels like a standard — less Tori Amos, more Cole Porter.
Her dedication to craft extends to her lyrics, which offer plenty of crunch. Her infamous potty mouth, deployed with precision and hilarity on her first two albums, is more restrained here; only four of 13 tracks earn an explicit warning. (For the record, Rodrigo is the only pop singer who should be allowed to curse more, because she is just so naturally funny when she does so.) But she does pepper her lyrics with specific nouns and concrete particulars. Paul Simon sang about a stolen chow fong; Lana Del Ray holed up at the Mariners Apartment Complex; and Rodrigo works in all kinds of hyper specific details, from buzz cuts to local florists. She doesn’t drink beer, but vodka crans. And she and her boy don’t bond over just any song, but “Just Like Heaven,” an oldie from The Cure.
Speaking of whom, for the first time ever, Rodrigo brings abroad a featured performer— none other than Robert Smith himself. The most recent Taylor Swift album also had a lone feature, Sabrina Carpenter, which felt designed to confirm Swift’s reign over the current pop ecosystem. Rodrigo seems more interested in building a rich catalog and a lasting legacy, to say nothing of bridging her Gen Z fans with her exquisite millennial/Gen X taste. Smith shows up on “What’s Wrong with Me,” a perfect continuation of The Cure’s romantic doom and fizzy melancholy. It could almost be a holdover from The Head on the Door, and Smith sounds perfectly at home navigating Rodrigo’s sadsack lyrics: “Went to the doctor and she said I was fine/ but every movie that I see makes me cry.”
But there’s also a song called “The Cure,” which serves as the album’s fulcrum. Mere weeks ago, Kacey Musgraves released her terrific Middle of Nowhere, which wrestled with the insufficiency of romantic love to solve all our problems. Rodrigo’s song takes up a similar theme, paying off the album’s imagery of sickness and insanity by positioning a dating relationship as a failed antidote. The song is over five minutes long, with an extended instrumental build that recalls the arena-swelling grandeur of U2 or Coldplay. When Rodrigo hits the road again, this song is sure to serve as her version of “Where the Streets Have No Names”— basically an IV drip of euphoria.
The actual middle of the album is “Purple,” a song about red blending with blue, joy mixing with lament, one lover’s identity being subsumed by another. It’s a smart song that not only summarizes the album’s themes, but crystalizes Rodrigo’s big leap forward in thematically rich and cohesive record-making. If it doesn’t pack the immediate thrill of “Good 4 u” or “All American Bitch”— and if the album in general doesn’t have quite the same spiky energy as the first two— the tradeoffs are worthwhile, and there are riches aplenty here. You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love heralds an adventurous, ambitious new era for Olivia Rodrigo, one that rewards close attention and repeated listening. And it confirms her not only as a serious songwriter, but as our most interesting pop star.
My rating: 8.5 out of 10.