Olivia Rodrigo’s commitment to the naivety of youthful love shines true on her 3rd album
‘you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’ displays a shift to a more calculated confessional narrative.
★★★★½
Photo: Press
Following two commercially and critically acclaimed records that earned her a slot as a Glastonbury headliner and three number one singles, Olivia Rodrigo’s return delivers a new set of diaristic entries capturing the two sides of the coin of love, infatuation and withdrawal.
Ditching the youthful lilac colouring that defined her first two records, Olivia’s latest sees her and longtime producer Dan Nigro reach a sense of artistic command over her lyrical narratives, capturing the process of a dissolving relationship with unfiltered honesty.
you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love perfectly encapsulates this record’s sentiment: the willingness to be consumed by devotion whilst acknowledging the gradual loss of self experienced during the doubt of long-term commitment. Lead single, drop dead, paves the way for this turbulent narrative, expressing the overwhelming rush felt on a first date and the uncertainty that comes with mutual affection when you first meet. It’s a punchy pop track carved with a new wave undercurrent, consumed in bright vocal harmonies and a lustful spoken word second verse. It’s the start of the record’s all-consuming first half, with following track, stupid song, sustaining the narrative with flowing dynamic shifts and crescendo choruses that pave this overwhelming feeling of adoration.
On lovesick ballad honeybee, the idea of this love vanishing troubles her: “And I hope I never see what your face looks like going / A face I swear that I could spend my whole life knowing / Here’s to hoping.” It leaves this sense of reluctance to have this love as a memory and not forever.
purple marks the point where the album’s central relationship begins to unravel, using colour as a recurring motif to chart its deterioration. Rodrigo repeatedly likens the couple to red and blue blending to create purple, only for the song’s closing moments to see those colours darken into black, signalling the relationship’s inevitable collapse.
While the track’s sparse production and largely stagnant progression leave it somewhat underwhelming sonically, its final lyrics effectively foreshadow the emotional devastation explored on the cure. Here, Rodrigo articulates the self-destructive tendencies that have lingered beneath the album’s surface, simultaneously expressing a desire for love to act as a remedy. Although this longing appears throughout the record in subtler forms, the cure confronts it directly: “And all the nights I spent fighting bad thoughts in my room / Feeling so alone, might as well be on the moon / I thought I found the antidote with you.”
Musically, the track’s indebtedness to alternative acts such as The Smashing Pumpkins and The Cure reflects Rodrigo’s continued embrace of alternative rock influences; an artistic direction that not only broadens her sound but also positions her beyond the increasingly short-lived cycles of mainstream pop appeal. This connection is further reinforced through her collaboration with Robert Smith on what’s wrong with me, whose stark lyricism — “Oh, I’m not feeling like myself / All amber lights and warning bells / Oh, I’m not feeling like myself / I’m not hiding it well” — provides one of the album's most unguarded moments.
Olivia’s relationship started to unravel while making this record, ultimately displaying a narrative driven by infatuation in its first half until the clear turning point is marked by the switch from these loved-up songs to ones steeped in regret and reminiscence. A sense of hope portrays the primary feeling of this record, whilst also painting falling in love as this volatile feeling, with Rodrigo reaching a level of lyrical perfection and depth rarely achieved by her pop contemporaries.
Olivia’s confessional songwriting and vulnerability is a significant step up in maturity compared to her previous efforts. While SOUR and GUTS paved her stylistic endeavours, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love expands on sonic progressions and lyrical depth in a way that draws from artistic predecessors while primarily remaining unique to herself.
you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is out now via Geffen Records.
