Review: Olivia Rodrigo – Guts

There was a tweet several months back by a freelance music critic that went something like: “This album rips”/Only 797 words to go.

This album rips.

Guts is pretty much critic proof anyway. Its predecessor, Sour, went double platinum. But this, her second album is way better than it really has any right being. The nineteen, now twenty-year old ex-Disney Channel star has given us a vintage No Doubt album with an illuminati hotties album burbling under the surface. It sounds like Los Angeles: bright, bubbly, dirty, angst in its pants.

Rodrigo spins out number one hit songs quicker than Charlotte could fashion a web, and some of them are just as magical. “vampire” is the centerpiece and let’s be serious: it’s one of the best songs of the year. Don’t fight it, just submit. Is she breaking new ground here? Doesn’t this kind of sound like a revved-up version of Lorde’s “Green Light”? Who fucking cares? Rodrigo announces her credo in the opener, “all american bitch”: “I know my age, and I act like it.”

But, she is a damn good songwriter for her age. “Skin like puff pastry” is a beauty (“Lacy”). Rodrigo gets lead songwriting credit along with her producer. You may be tempted to ask, well who is really doing the writing here? Don’t do this. People did this to Courtney Love. It’s misogynistic, you sound like an asshole, and it gets you nothing.

Anyway, these sound like songs a smart teenage girl would write. (I had one living with me and my wife for a long spell.) Those girls are mean and funny, loving and hateful, confident and self-conscious. Many, many events signal the immediate end of the world to them. And these songs are witty and bratty with soooo much drama. You think it’s easy being beautiful, rich, talented, and famous? Rodrigo says it’s not and I believe her completely.

Who was the ex-boyfriend? Christ, buddy, you better go underground. Almost this entire album is composed of breakup songs. What could a guy have done to make Olivia freaking Rodrigo so mad and revenge-minded? Talk about some seriously bad life choices. “Just watch as I crucify/Myself for some weird second string/Loser who’s not worth mentioning/My God, love’s embarrassing as hell.” Ouch.

Rodrigo just rakes this guy again and again, pausing occasionally to flagellate herself for even bothering. She is quite self-aware, but can’t help repeatedly wrecking this poor sap’s shit.

I could have done with only one Swiftian piano ballad. (Rodrigo is a professed huge Taylor fan. Just keep Jack Antonoff’s paws off of her.) The slow songs are pale imitations of No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak.” Granted, not a major criticism; that is a monster song and casts a huge shadow.

She is at her best—and her best is very, very good—when she is up-tempo. The break-up songs blister. “Oh, what a mesmerizing, paralyzing fucked up little thrill/Can’t figure out how you do it and God knows I never will.” (“vampire”). The other gigantic single “…get him back” is quite clever. “I want to key his car/I want to make him lunch” is nearing lyrical economy perfection.

She is better, too, at introspection in the rousing tunes as in the lo-fi (!) rocker, “ballad of a homeschooled girl.” That song makes an interesting musical pairing with “pretty isn’t pretty” which sonically harkens back to Liverpool’s favorite sons, Echo and The Bunnymen. You know where that leads don’t you? Echo and the Bunnymen is a gateway drug, a tentative hit off a pipe compared to the straight horse of listening to (Ed.—Rick, you were asked to go one review without mentioning Pavement.) Ah, never mind. But…..what if she continues down this path?

On the album’s closer, “teenage dream” (the one slow song I’d keep), Rodrigo contemplates her present and her future, noting that “They all say that it gets better the more you grow.” Man, what sick bastard told her that. You know how Spotify will start playing “suggested” songs after an album ends? Mine always plays Big Thief’s new single “Vampire Empire.”

Adrianne Lenker is one of the best songwriters in the business and this song is a scorcher. “You give me chills, I’ve had it with the drills/I’m nothing, you are nothing, we are nothing with the pills/I am empty ‘til she fills, alive until she kills/In her vampire empire, I am/Falling, yeah/Falling, yeah.” More eloquent of course, more elusive in meaning, but it does fit with “vampire.” And no, the 32-year-old Ms. Lenker is telling you, it most certainly does not get better.

And you know what? Olivia Rodrigo is going to be fine. “I know my place/I know my place, and this is it.” (“all american bitch”). Goddamn right it is.

Words by Rick Larson