The Gen Z sensation’s follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut album Sour takes a more humorous and unserious approach.
Since entering the entertainment world, Olivia Rodrigo has consistently been praised for her immense talent – she’s been lauded for her acting, particularly for her star-making role in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and for her songwriting capabilities with the release of her 2021 Grammy-winning debut album, Sour.
One aspect of her talent that sometimes goes unnoticed, however, is her sense of humour, which was interwoven subtly throughout her first record.
Guts, her second album, is a fitting, if not symbolic, follow-up. While her debut centred around her first teenage heartbreak, her sophomore offering navigates the aftermath. There are new exes, new flames, and new insecurities, but her perspective on dealing with these experiences has changed significantly.
Rather than always drowning in her tears, the singer discovers mayhem in misery. Sorrows are replaced with sass, and softly spun guitar melodies are traded for blistering, audacious pop-punk anthems.
Sonically speaking, though, this isn’t a new trajectory for Rodrigo. Her latest album reunites the singer with her music producer and friend Dan Nigro, marking their second full-length project together. They’re proving to be a powerhouse duo, and this time, they push the boundaries further with the maximalist sound they introduced on the Sour tracks “good 4 u” and “brutal” (all her song names are stylised in lowercase), allowing Rodrigo to continue channelling her inner rock star.
The album’s raucous and confident energy kicks off instantly with the opening song, “all-american bitch”, which unpacks the pop star’s rage at the double standards faced by women. She then ramps up the theatrics on “bad idea right?” and lead single “vampire”. Self-deprecating jokes are spiked everywhere across the album, but more so on “ballad of a homeschool girl”, a comical, grungy number that finds her committing several “social suicides”. “Thought your mom was your wife / Called you the wrong name twice,” she confesses bluntly.
When she’s not poking fun at herself, Rodrigo has no qualms about throwing playful jabs at others, turning all her cringey mistakes with her past flings into laughable memories. The singer’s sarcasm seeps into tracks like “get him back!”, where she struggles between seeking revenge and rekindling a fleeting romance. Meanwhile, on “love is embarrassing”, she candidly admits falling for a “loser who’s not worth mentioning”.
But whenever the album leans too far into whimsy, Rodrigo expertly reins it back in. The mellower moments on Guts are interspersed thoughtfully, serving as much-needed breaks between the louder, chaotic moments.
First, there’s the folksy ballad “lacy”, a song that evolved from an assignment the singer had originally written for a poetry class during her stint at the University of Southern California. Then midway through the album comes “logical”, a dramatic, piano-driven track where she details the warning signs of being with a “master manipulator”. She painfully recounts the toxic relationship and reflects on her former flame’s behaviour, everything from his love bombing to gaslighting. “But you convinced me, baby,” she cries out regretfully. “It was all in my mind.”
Of course, Rodrigo is no stranger to writing about a broken heart. She pens her feelings with raw, emotional relatability and intensity as evidenced by her certified smash hit “drivers license”. It is one of her greatest strengths and is undoubtedly turning into her signature style.
On “the grudge”, the antepenultimate track on Guts, Rodrigo tries to recapture that magic. Personal, hard-hitting, and honest, the song starts as a whisper, like a secret she’s hesitant to reveal, before it gradually builds and then unravels to expose the underlying heartache of being betrayed by someone whom she describes as her “everything”. The slight quiver in her voice as she belts out the bridge is a standout moment.
Similar to Sour, Guts starts off bold and concludes on a bittersweet and more sombre note. Unlike Katy Perry’s song of the same name, the album’s closer, “teenage dream”, isn’t about falling for someone who makes you feel young again. Instead, Rodrigo’s version is about her fear of losing her youth.
The song ends with her wondering if things will start to look up from here on out: “They all say that it gets better / It gets better, but what if I don’t?” It’s a poignant way to finish the album’s 40-minute runtime and ultimately wrap up her teenhood. Whatever the future may hold for Rodrigo, it’s bound to happen on her own terms. Perhaps the singer’s next four-letter word album can be titled Hope.
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GUTS is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo.
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