“All I did was try my best, this the kinda thanks I get,” Olivia Rodrigo now famously bemoans on, “brutal,” the opening track to Sour. But, to be honest, did she really try that hard? You know, in terms of not borrowing sonically and visually from just about everyone who blazed the trail only for her to step onto well-trodden territory and claim it as her own?
One of those people was Hayley Williams, who, although embodying “pop-punk” in a similar way to Avril Lavigne, was something entirely different. Not just because it had been so long since the world had seen a good frontwoman (perhaps, at the time, not since No Doubt burst onto the scene), but because there seemed to be something more authentic about her rage and contempt, qualities that became “precious” in the care of Lavigne. Rodrigo, too—despite coming across more like the latter—must have seen (and heard) something inspiring in Paramore’s act, having finally succumbed to giving Williams and Joshua Farro songwriting credits after the numerous callouts regarding the obvious interpolation of “Misery Business” into “good 4 u.” A video that, as it happens, borrows aesthetically from influences ranging from Promising Young Woman to Jennifer’s Body to “…Baby One More Time” (Rodrigo, indeed, is quite fond of “borrowing” from Britney Spears despite her “rocker” sensibilities).
Earlier this summer, Rodrigo also gave credits to Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff and Annie Clark (a.k.a. St. Vincent) on “deja vu” (“influenced” by Swift’s “Cruel Summer”). Before the record came out, Rodrigo already got permission to use chords from Swift’s “New Year’s Day” on “1 step forward, 3 steps back”—which gives Swift and Antonoff even more royalties for their “trouble” (incidentally, a good one-word title for Rodrigo’s next album). That’s a whole lot of royalty losses for the sake of “being inspired” by other people. And we all know Courtney Love is still fuming that she didn’t somehow get a piece of the pie.
Yet one person markedly left out of the “influence” (read: ripped off from) equation is Post-Breakup Rage Queen herself, Alanis Morissette. As a woman who essentially wrote the bible—Jagged Little Pill—on how to be “bitter” (a.k.a. rightfully upset) on a breakup album, there’s no denying her imprint here. The pièce de résistance being, of course, “You Oughta Know.” And even in spite of knowing it’s about Dave Coulier, it still doesn’t detract from the effectiveness of the wrathful single. The video for which Morissette shot in the desert, traipsing around the Mojave with a suitcase that indicates she’s been left out in the proverbial cold (or heat, in this case) by the man who discarded her for another. Dripping with sarcasm the way Rodrigo is when she announces, “Good for you/You’re happy and healthy,” Alanis opens her song with, “I want you to know/That I’m happy for you/I wish nothing but the best for you both.”
The crux of each song also deals with its songwriter coming to terms with her ex’s abandonment in favor of another woman. In both cases, one who is older, therefore more “sophisticated.” While Rodrigo refers to that “older” (you know, by like a few years) woman on songs like “drivers license,” she doesn’t mention age on “good 4 u,” leaving Alanis to be the one to say, “An older version of me/Is she perverted like me?” Probably not, which is why he went for her instead, what with men preferring the “Madonna” trope” to the so-called whore one when they actually want to “settle down.”
With both women screaming to be heard as a means to remind the male offender that she hasn’t gone away just because he cast her aside, Rodrigo’s take is, “Well good for you, I guess you moved on really easily/You found a new girl, and it only took a couple weeks/Remember when you said that you wanted to give me the world?/And good for you, I guess that you’ve been working on yourself…/Now you can be a better man for your brand-new girl.” The sardonic tone serves to mitigate the all-out rage that Alanis seemed more comfortable conveying amid the glory of a mid-90s grunge climate, wailing, “And I’m here, to remind you/Of the mess you left when you went away/It’s not fair, to deny me/Of the cross I bear that you gave to me/You, you, you oughta know.” The “you’re happy and healthy” element of Rodrigo’s song then mirrors Alanis’ when she calmly notes, “You seem very well, things look peaceful/I’m not quite as well, I thought you should know.” Or, as Rodrigo would phrase it, “Good for you, you look happy and healthy/Not me, if you ever cared to ask.” But of course he doesn’t, he’s too busy having prim sex with his wispier new boo (the only thing wispier than Rodrigo, apparently, being someone blonde).
Thus, Alanis is forced to berate her ex and remind her that she still very much exists with the lines, “Did you forget about me, Mr. Duplicity?/I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner/It was a slap in the face/How quickly I was replaced/And are you thinking of me when you fuck her?”
The same ire (well, a more Disney-ified ire, if you will) appears when Rodrigo goads, “And good for you, it’s like you never even met me/Remember when you swore to God I was the only/Person who ever got you?/Well, screw that and screw you/You will never have to hurt the way you know that I do.” Ah, but Alanis isn’t so quick to bear the brunt of all the pain when she witchily forewarns, “I’m not gonna fade as soon as you close your eyes, and you know it/And every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back, I hope you feel it/Well, can you feel it?”
Surely, even Rodrigo’s ex can feel it based on how much contempt and vitriol Morissette managed to bottle into a four-minute, eight-second track. Of the variety that Rodrigo has now diluted into a “palatable” pop-punk ditty (because jagged little pills like “You Oughta Know” are harder to swallow) that fits more conveniently into capitalism’s agenda of constantly “repurposing” for additional profit. In any event, should Rodrigo find herself giving songwriting credit to yet another person on this single, it oughta be Morissette, who clearly established the template.
