For Olivia Rodrigo, at least, the sophomore slump never seemed to be an issue
The second album by the three-time Grammy winner from Murrieta, California arrives on a frothy tide of expectation.
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She sold 17 million copies of her critically acclaimed debut Sour, spent nine weeks at No 1 in Ireland with her very first single Drivers Licence and she is the youngest ever artist to debut at the top of Billboard's Hot 100 chart.
Suffice to say, GUTS will be one of the biggest records of the year. Oh, and over two years after it first came out, her first album is at No 11 in the latest Irish album chart.
Olivia Rodrigo is still only 20.
What’s a supremely gifted singer and songwriter to do? Well, her answer is simple - more of the same, except harder, faster and funnier.
GUTS (and that’s all CAPs, pop kids!) is a righteous one-fingered salute to idiot exes and music execs but it also charts the pains of negotiating instant mega fame and the projections of the media, good and bad. Note: she has a fondness for a well-aimed F bomb, In fact, Olivia Rodrigo is the pop rock Scorsese of F bombs.
Not that she ever was, but it’s clear that she’s not willing to play nice anymore. Rodrigo may have begun her career acting on Disney TV shows but she didn’t bother with the usual transformation from tween starlet to badass rocker - she was there already.
This new collection of hugely melodic guitar anthems embraces emo, grunge, pop rock and on delicious opening track All American Bitch, folk. It does ye olde quiet/loud switcheroo from acoustics and chirpy mandolin to Avril Lavigne trash rock as she trades verses of happiness and light with a darker punkier sneer "I know my age and I act like it" she hollers, giving it a bit of Courtney Love. Here are the two sides of Olivia Rodrigo - the supplicant good girl mega seller the industry wants her to be and the gnarly rocker that she really is.
She is a very modern pop star alright but her music and influences might be called Gen Z’s idea of vintage. Rodrigo has already flirted with New Wave era Elvis Costello on Brutal from her first album and GUTS crackles with the buzz of amps, guitar leads being ripped outta sockets and analogue tape spooling out in the studio.
No surprise then that she grew up listening to No Doubt, Pearl Jam, The White Stripes, Green Day and more recently Sleater-Kinney. Try not to hear The Cure while listening to Pretty Isn't Pretty and doesn’t Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl, a bratty, throwaway rock stomp, sound like it was inspired by Nirvana’s School?
On the standout Bad Idea Right?, Rodrigo weights up the right thing to do with the fun thing to do in a hilarious internal debate about whether she should really be going out on a date with her ex. "Can’t you people reconnect? I only see him as a friend," she sings as herky-jerky New Wave guitars go haywire and detonate. "I just tripped and fell into his bed."
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Crunchy guitar pop is her calling card but recent single Vampire owes quite a lot to Christina Perri’s Jar of Hearts, only Rodrigo is lambasting fame, fickle fame and not some two-timing bloke. The sooooo very pretty Lacy - a Billie Eilish style slice of fatalistic goth pop about infatuation - has its own chill factor: "Dear angel Lacy with eyes wide as daisies, did I ever tell you I’m not doing very well?"
She’s burnt out at 19 on Teenage Dream and revives dread turn of the century rock rap on Get Him Back! ("I want to make him feel jealous and make him feel bad, I want to meet his mom just to tell her that her son sucks"), but it all seems like a build-up to the, well, guts of GUTS; Making the Bed, a doomy meditation on fame on which she wonders if the Faustian pact was worth it.
We can safely say it's too late for buyer's remorse. For Olivia Rodrigo, at least, the sophomore slump never seemed to be an issue. GUTS is a stinging rebuke to anyone who thought her debut was a freak one-off.
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
