The thing Olivia Rodrigo has been praised for repeatedly since the monumental and continuing success of “drivers license” is her unique ability to speak to all age groups. Whether someone in her own demographic or someone perhaps approaching their “Golden Years” (the period she’s told she’s experiencing purely for being in her teens). For the feeling of one’s “heartbreak virginity” being taken is never really forgotten, especially when evinced so eloquently in lyrics like Rodrigo’s.
But for those expecting the entire album to sound so “straight up elegiacal,” it might be a surprise to learn that Sour is at times an all-out homage to the grunge sonics that a 90s girl like Courtney Love would probably still balk at for not being “visceral” enough. Nonetheless, Rodrigo hits us hard with the record’s opener, “brutal.” Here, too, she can take any age group back to that moment in time when all the “adults” were annoyingly telling them to enjoy their youth amid the baseline trauma of growing up and realizing life isn’t all ice cream (strawberry, for Rodrigo) and sunshine.
This is the precise theme addressed on “brutal.” With an aggravated rhythm that sounds a lot like Veruca Salt (specifically “Seether”), Rodrigo, embodying the new poster child for “angst-ridden teen,” shouts, “I’m relentlessly upset” and “They say these are the golden years, but I wish I could disappear.” Shattering the persistent myth that there’s nothing better than being young—as though that in and of itself is a virtue to cancel out all the other pratfalls that come with the defining characteristic—Rodrigo reminds us of the heightened insecurities that go hand in hand with it as she wails, “I feel like no one wants me/And I hate the way I’m perceived/I only have two real friends/And lately, I’m a nervous wreck/‘Cause I love people I don’t like/And I hate every song I write/And I’m not cool, and I’m not smart.” For good “California girl” measure and a Cher Horowitz flourish, she adds, “And I can’t even parallel park.”
In some ways, and this is not to belittle the work at all, Rodrigo’s opener (and many parts of the rest of Sour) harkens back to Ashlee Simpson’s debut, Autobiography. Even if she was twenty when the album came out, the lingering teen girl still infiltrated Simpson’s songwriting thanks to the confessional tone—the rage and angst wrapped up in a long-haired girl you could still call “pretty.”
But Rodrigo doesn’t really feel that way, lamenting, “Ego crush is so severe, God…it’s brutal out here.” “Out here” being, of course, the motherfucking world. And even though we all tell ourselves anything has to be better than high school, the truth is, that phase of life feels almost like a light breeze compared to the additional growing pains that will come. Not to discount the war zone that is the junior high and high school era of teendom. But once you’re out of it, you see how overly dramatic it all was exactly because there had never before been anything else in your life to compare it to.
The “Alanis tone” of Sour, however, is also intermixed with accusing ballads that cry betrayal…like, literally. There’s a song called “traitor,” following “brutal”—a perfect one-two punch in track listing arrangement. Here, Rodrigo veers back into more familiar “drivers license” territory as she once again addresses her favorite topic of the moment: the Disney love triangle consisting of herself, Sabrina Carpenter and Joshua Bassett. Working with producer Dan Nigro (whose previous list of collaborators are right at home with Rodrigo’s genre, namely Sky Ferreira and Carly Rae Jepsen), the more stripped down musical background allows Rodrigo’s voice to swell with more pronounced anger infused with sadness—sort of her brand—as she announces, “You betrayed me/‘Cause I know that you’ll never feel sorry for the way I hurt/You talked to her when we were together/You gave me your word but that didn’t matter/It took you two weeks to go off and date her/Guess you didn’t cheat, but you’re still, you’re still a traitor.” The longstanding argument over whether or not infidelity has to be physical in order for it to really be considered cheating is blown out of the water here by Rodrigo, who argues that it only takes a bit of “harmless” flirtation to lay the groundwork for something more damaging to the person still fully committed in the relationship.
Thus, she can’t help but despise the one who has done her wrong all the more for his callousness and one-eighty reversal of affections as she rues, “God, I wish that you had thought this through/Before I went and fell in love with you.” For obviously, she never would have invested so much time in this asshole if she had known he was going to go and get his dick wet somewhere else. Then again, perhaps another curse of naïve youth (especially for girls) is the notion that monogamy is possible for blokes (particularly ones whose hormones are still churning and burning with the fire of a thousand suns).
The slowed down pace of “traitor” (particularly compared to “brutal”) transitions nicely into the song everybody knows by now—the one that started it all for Rodrigo’s international acclaim. A little “car flourish” (the dinging sound of a door being opened) at the intro to “drivers license” establishes what’s to come: a whole lot of fucking suburban melodrama. In point of fact, this is the one way in which a parallel can be drawn between Rodrigo and Lana Del Rey, who herself also just released some new music in the way of a song trio. Del Rey, too, in her role as an honorary Californian, can appreciate the “drama” that Golden State tableaus provide—particularly the suburban sprawl. The very kind that warrants needing a driver’s license in the first place as you can’t walk fucking anywhere without getting, well, “1 step forward, 3 steps back,” as the next song is called.
This piano ballad is where Rodrigo most sounds like her teen girl counterpart of the moment, Billie Eilish. Describing what sounds like a relationship with a narcissist prickhead, Rodrigo sings, “‘Cause it’s always one step forward and three steps back I’m the love of your life until I make you mad/It’s always one step forward and three steps back/Do you love me, want me, hate me?/Boy, I don’t understand/No, I don’t understand.” Uh, girl. He’s a gaslighting dick, that’s all there is to understand. And you should probably run as far and as fast as possible from his kind. Alas, Rodrigo, in her Pisces fashion, is addicted to the pain, admitting, “And maybe in some masochistic way I kind of find it all exciting/Like which lover will I get today?/Will you walk me to the door or send me home cryin’?” This foreshadows a similar dilemma on “favorite crime.” Rodrigo also acknowledges the youth factor of her problem in terms of not having any other relationship to compare this one to, bewailing, “And I’d leave you/But the roller coaster’s all I’ve ever had.” So how could she now “(mal)function” without it?
Despite being forlorn about the one who she thought loved her instead abandoning her, she finds time to intersperse the ire that comes with the sadness—as evidenced once again on “deja vu.” The running motif on Sour isn’t just that Rodrigo has been emotionally gutted and rendered bereft, but that such a slew of gut-punching emotions has been further augmented by the fact that this isn’t merely a breakup, but treachery of the highest order as evidenced by his emotional and then physical unfaithfulness. Yet even for as livid (Olividia Rodrigo) as she is, she knows some part of her would take him back in a heartbeat if he was still interested.
This goes back to “…Baby One More Time,” when Britney Spears was the “teenage dream” herself, at seventeen, and sang of how her loneliness was killing her. Although it might have been wrapped up in a danceable pop veneer, Spears’ sentiment was as earnest and lugubrious as Rodrigo’s. The difference is that we now live in a time when “bubblegum pop,” as it was called, simply doesn’t come across as “authentic” to teen listeners anymore (though what could be more authentic than the emotions of Tiffany singing “I Think We’re Alone Now”?).
On creating the sonic landscape of Sour, Rodrigo stated, “My dream is to have it be an intersection between mainstream pop, folk music and alternative rock. I love the songwriting and the lyricism and the melodies of folk music. I love the tonality of alt-rock. Obviously, I’m obsessed with pop and pop artists. So I’m going to try and take all of my sort of influences…and make something that I like.” This effect she has most definitely achieved, and it applies again to the tonal shift on “good 4 u,” which mélanges everything from pop punk (à la Avril Lavigne) to grunge to Swiftian grudge-holding. Dripping with sarcasm, Rodrigo feigns how “super happy” she is that her ex could move on so easily with his “brand new girl.” Meanwhile, she’s “lost [her] mind” and “spent the night cryin’ on the floor of [her] bathroom.” Such is the curse of being suddenly deemed day-old bread at seventeen.
“enough for you” might also have “for you” in its title, but it is in direct contrast to the modulation of the previous song. Back to her sweeter iteration of “desperate and despondent,” Rodrigo warbles, “But God, you couldn’t have cared less/About someone who loved you more/I’d say you broke my heart/But you broke much more than that/Now I don’t want your sympathy/I just want myself back.” After having gone through all the trouble to try to impress someone who was never going to love her reciprocally no matter what she did (or how much makeup she put on), Rodrigo is now in the midst of a post-trauma identity crisis. Is there any of her original self left after trying so hard to stamp it out for the benefit of this puto? Eventually, perhaps, there will be. In the meantime, she throws out a Madonna-esque lyric—“Hung Up,” namely, during which M says, “I can’t keep on waiting for you/I know that you’re still hesitating/Don’t cry for me/‘Cause I’ll find my way/You’ll wake up one day, but it’ll be too late.” Rodrigo instead phrases it as, “But don’t tell me you’re sorry, boy/Feel sorry for yourself/‘Cause someday I’ll be everything to somebody else/And they’ll think that I am so exciting/And then you’ll be the one who’s crying.”
Rodrigo does her best to have a more “que sera sera” attitude on “happier”—even if tinged with her own unavoidable breed of resentment and covetousness. As she explains to the tune of this slow jam (at times infused with the “ooos” of a 1950s ballad), “I thought my heart was detached from all the sunlight of our past/But she’s so sweet, she’s so pretty/Does she mean you forgot about me?” Sorry to say, yes, it probably does. After all, Gwen Stefani’s “Cool” this is not (even for all of Rodrigo’s posturing about loving pop).
Doing her best to sound “zen” about the whole thing, she insists, “Oh, I hope you’re happy”—a sentiment then undercut by, “But not like how you were with me I’m selfish, I know/I can’t let you go/So find someone great, but don’t find no one better/I hope you’re happy, but don’t be happier.” In other words, “Why wasn’t it me?” to borrow a question from Carrie Bradshaw. Indeed, this song could have easily been played at any point during the story arc about Big getting married to Natasha.
Except Carrie’s writing isn’t artful enough to paint something as evocative as, “And do you tell her she’s the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen?/An ‘eternal love’ bullshit you know you’ll never mean/Remember when I believed you meant it when you said it first to me?” These lyrics, too, are a redux of the theme and feelings expressed in “deja vu,” with Rodrigo laying claim to being the “first,” therefore the inimitable real deal (sort of like the bragging privileges Madonna can demand anytime she wants to when all these pop star zygotes get uppity).
The jealousy expressed on “happier” persists on, what else, “jealousy, jealousy.” Riffing on the idea of being “followed” by someone on social media, Rodrigo concludes the song with the lyrical pun, “Jealousy started following me.” For someone of Rodrigo’s age, who grew up never knowing a world without social media, the pressure of comparison only compounds the difficulties of enduring adolescence. A contempt-filled song such as this naturally requires Rodrigo’s reversion to her “rock tinge.” A mid-tempo rhythm accordingly punctuates Rodrigo’s controlled bitterness as she narrates, “I kinda wanna throw my phone across the room/‘Cause all I see are girls too good to be true/With paper white teeth and perfect bodies/Wish I didn’t care/I know their beauty’s not my lack/But it feels like that weight is on my back.” And yes, of course it is. On all of our backs as we pretend to be something we’re not while also feigning that we haven’t seen these “snapshots” of other people’s lives at all while scrolling. For when they mention something in person about what we saw online, we simply feign ignorance—a sick part of us not wanting them to know just how much we do pay attention, even in our glazed over state.
Revisiting the line of thinking in “happier,” Rodrigo declares, “And I see everyone gettin’ all the things I want/I’m happy for them, but then again, I’m not.” Because why shouldn’t she have them instead? Here enters the crux of the problem with social media, particularly for people like Rodrigo who are still being formed. As she says: “All I see is what I should be.” Without much chance to mold one’s own opinions and ideals at a crucial phase of emotional growth—for the brain is already being infected by society’s normie rhetoric. Which is why Rodrigo expresses, “I’m so sick of myself/I’d rather be, rather be/Anyone, anyone else.” Since “anyone else” surely must be having a better time than her miserable, “sour” ass. Thus she chants, “Com-comparison is killin’ me slowly/I think I think too much/‘Bout kids who don’t know me.” And kids who don’t even care, for they’re far more wrapped up in conveying their own pristine illusions than paying attention to the ones curated by other people.
Talking of “curation,” a much-discussed subject of late seems to be: to what extent victims are complicit in their own vicitimhood? Rodrigo plays up this notion as the key plot point of “favorite crime.” For while her ex is the primary culprit, she has to admit her own collusion in the crime of breaking her heart. Though, again, she also implicates the girl who stole her man in the atrocity as well. This much is evinced in the highly emotional lines, “Know that I loved you so bad I let you treat me like that/I was your willing accomplice, honey/And I watched as you fled the scene/Doe-eyed as you buried me/One heart broke, four hands bloody.” These pairs of hands belonging to both Bassett and Carpenter, it would seem. It is said by those who believe victims conjure their own fate that, “We accept the love we think we deserve.” Hopefully, after this painful lesson, Rodrigo will move on from fuckboys. At the same time, they’re pretty hard to avoid at her age. Or any age, really.
The coda to this elegiac album to teenhood is “hope ur ok.” And while one might have been conditioned throughout the rest of this album to believe that there would be sarcasm behind the statement, Rodrigo genuinely means it here. Perhaps because it’s not about her ex, but other people she’s encountered throughout her adolescence. She genuinely wishes them well as she says, “Don’t know if I’ll see you again someday/But if you’re out there, I hope that you’re okay.”
Focusing on the tale of two peers in particular with, well, shitty parents, she comes up with another epic bridge in the form of, “Address the letters to the holes in my butterfly wings/Nothing’s forever, nothing’s as good as it seems/And when the clouds won’t iron out/And the monsters creep into your house/Every door is hard to close/Well, I hope you know how proud I am you were created/With the courage to unlearn all of their hatred.” And sometimes, all it takes for teens to unlearn the hatred of their parents is simply fleeing the scene at eighteen.
If they never see the people they went to school with again, maybe it’s possible that someone like Rodrigo is out there wishing for them, “God, I hope that you’re happier today/‘Cause I love you/And I hope that you’re okay.” As for Rodrigo, after releasing Sour and surviving her high school (musical) years, she’ll undoubtedly be “okay,” and then some.
