While she might not have ever been a Disney star, there’s something about GAYLE that mirrors the meteoric rise of Olivia Rodrigo based on one single—“drivers license.” Prior to which, no one really had any idea who this dame was. The same goes for GAYLE, with the equally stylized in title “abcdefu.” And, like Rodrigo’s heroine, Taylor Swift, GAYLE, too, went to Nashville to pursue a music career, discovered by a guardian angel in the form of Kara DioGuardi, a songwriter and music publisher for Arthouse Entertainment who helped secure GAYLE’s deal with Atlantic Records.
As another of the few (seven)teen-year-olds to join the ranks of Billie Eilish (now “day-old bread” because she’s twenty), Griff (about to be twenty-one) and Rodrigo (who was seventeen for most of the promotion of Sour), it’s interesting to note that GAYLE picks up where all three women have barely left off on the “angsty breakup song” front.
For Eilish, Happier Than Ever was as much of a breakup album as Sour, with the eponymous single throwing shade for days, especially about how this boy (presumably “Q”) made Billie hate “this city” (that means L.A.—too bad it wasn’t New York instead). It was slightly more mature-sounding than “good 4 u” (regardless of the themes of “Happier Than Ever” mimicking that single, as well as “drivers license”). And even Griff (about to usurp Eilish in age on January 21) has more “sophisticated”-sounding fare than Rodrigo on her debut EP, One Foot in Front of the Other. The song of the same name has the gall to tout, “You know it’s easy when you’re young/You bounce back and whatever/Just bounce back like it never happened,” as though, you know, Griff isn’t impossibly young even despite having left her teens.
For GAYLE, she’s only too ready to embrace the same level of venom that Rodrigo channeled through her raging teen girl hormones on Sour hits like “brutal,” “deja vu” (one of the songs GAYLE cited as her top five in 2021) and, of course, “good 4 u.” In point of fact, there are several lyrics from “abcdefu” that, if taken out of context, could easily be mistaken for coming straight from the journals of Rodrigo (who prides herself on that Swiftian tactic for songwriting—which is also why Taylor Swift is selling journals with “All Too Well”-adjacent graphics). For example, when GAYLE seethes, “[You] dated a girl that I hate for the attention/She only made it two days, what a connection,” the sarcasm channels Rodrigo on “traitor” when she accuses, “It took you two weeks/To go off and date her/Guess you didn’t cheat/But you’re still a traitor.” And also on “good 4 u” when she rails, “And good for you, I guess that you’ve been working on yourself/I guess that therapist I found for you, she really helped/Now you can be a better man for your brand-new girl.”
Similar lyrical content to the “let me regale (or reGAYLE) you with what this asshole did to me” stylings of Sour persists on “abcdefu” when GAYLE recounts, “You said you just needed space and so I gave it/When I had nothin’ to say you couldn’t take it/Told everyone I’m a bitch, so I became it/Always had to put yourself above me.” This, too, parallels the vibe of Eilish on “Happier Than Ever” when she laments, “You ruined everything good/Always said you were misunderstood/Made all my moments your own/Just fuckin’ leave me alone.”
Despite GAYLE having a lot in common with some of the disquietude of Eilish’s lyrics, it is Rodrigo whose path she seems to be on in terms of how rapidly she’s risen to fame through just one single (whereas Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes” didn’t quite the same categorical universal success). Both “drivers license” and “abcdefu” draw on the extremely raw emotions of a fresh breakup. And being that teens are deemed to have the superpower of feeling emotions more intensely than any other age bracket (except toddlers), the genuineness—therefore the resonance across ages—shines through easily.
Both Rodrigo and GAYLE gravitated toward music early on, with Rodrigo declaring she wrote her first song when she was five and GAYLE describing how she started singing at seven. Because, yes, these are truly the ages one needs to begin thinking about pop stardom if they’re really going to make a go of it. Britney Spears was already way ahead of the game at three—but she had yet to understand that her parents were largely so encouraging because they wanted to become her pimps.
Drawing from her personal experience with vampiric precision, GAYLE stated in an interview, “That song came from a place of trying so hard to be the nice, respectful ex-girlfriend, to the point where it was negatively affecting me. It’s about asking, ‘Why am I being so nice to this person who completely took advantage of me?,’ and allowing myself to express my anger about that.”
The sick burn factor amplifies on “abcdefu” when GAYLE uses her ex’s “art” against him and says, “Fuck you…and that shit you call art,” giving Rodrigo a run for her money when she more politely de-legitimizes her own ex’s “art” by reminding, “Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me.”
The video for “abcdefu,” with its “home movie” aesthetic, has a more wannabe Lana Del Rey-circa-2012 vibe than anything Rodrigo has done. And yet, a car also plays a central part of the plot as GAYLE and a few of her friends head over to her ex’s house to film themselves fucking with some items and then leaving the camera on his bed for him to watch the footage later so he can be scandalized/creeped out.
As for the single cover of “drivers license” it has a more “designer homemade” look than the one for “abcdefu,” which features an X-ray of GAYLE’s dislocated middle finger for a truly jarring effect. Though there is probably no one more jarred than whoever GAYLE’s ex is, a bloke who can now join the ranks of man-boys who have inspired songs that make them sound far more affecting than they really are.
