Olivia Rodrigo Brings Anti-Romance and Just the Right Dose of Revenge
A Review of Her Debut Album “SOUR”
Just in time for a moody post-pandemic summer, Olivia Rodrigo released her debut album SOUR. For Gen Z-ers and Millenials alike, Rodrigo blessed us with a no-notes, no-skip album. Instead of offering any critique or pessimism, I choose to simply wax on about this slightly manic teenage dreamscape gifted to all of us. Many are calling it a cultural shift, a moment of change, but only time will tell what comes of Rodrigo’s oeuvre — will it be a continuous landing of pop-punk jams and melodramatic ballads? We’ll see.
As for now, Rodrigo has come out of the gate ready to cut in eleven places before we realize we’re bleeding. She’s already shaken off the commercially viable feminity we’ve all come to expect from our pop stars, and instead is selling us something else entirely. After the January release of her debut single “drivers license,” her mainstream popularity, poise, and Disney past caused people to assume she would try to sell us the same trite teen dream we’ve so sadly come to expect. Yet, she manages to pull off genre-blending angst in all the right ways.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen the subtle and slow rise of lowercase girls — girls who tout a realness, authenticity, and an appetite for vulnerability over…
