Somewhere in Los Angeles on a warm night in October, Olivia Rodrigo twiddles a ring around her thumb as she sits on the edge of the stage in a small hotel ballroom. A rare treat for the audience, to be sat so closely to such a famous artist, and most likely for Rodrigo as well, as it’s a break from the stadiums she usually plays. From the eighth row, I find myself doing something similar, though my ring is on my pinky. It’s a nervous habit that the star and I share, but much like all of our similarities, the origins could not be more different. Rodrigo’s nerves stem from her performance in front of 600 people, and mine stem from more mundane places: My plane ride tomorrow, how I’ll get back to where I was staying in West Hollywood, and the heart-pumping emotions associated with a whirlwind trip across the country to see Rodrigo perform.
The concert was an acoustic rendition of Rodrigo’s latest album Guts. To me, Guts is a conversation on growing up, on the humanity of no longer being a teenage girl. It sounds like Rodrigo shedding her previous image, the one that was so deviously scrutinized for her audacity to be 17. The album features 12 songs, opening with the fiery “All American Bitch.” It’s an ideal song to start with, as it combines two key themes of the album: growing into something unknown, and the aggression that girlhood brings. She illustrates how women are often expected to suppress their anger: I don't get angry when I’m pissed, I’m the eternal optimist, I scream inside to deal with it.
In the later days of my senior year of high school, I found myself bringing the pink clothes in the back of my closet to the front and arranging my stuffed animals on my bed for the first time in months. It had been a few weeks since my very first boyfriend–a sandy-haired gym rat who knew very little about the world but assumed he knew everything that was important–and I had broken up. Once the effervescent black and white thoughts had evaporated, I began to wonder who I was anymore. I had spent the last year of my life slowly transforming under the gaze of someone who I would never hear from again after a random Friday in February of my 17th year.
That year I had grown an obsession with growing up, a subconscious effect of trying to navigate the perils of a teenage relationship. The pink I always wore faded into neutrals and the walls of my room grew sparse with a desperate attempt to shed my girlhood. Two weeks after the breakup and shortly before I realized that I actually loved the things that I was tearing out of my life, Olivia Rodrigo released her debut album, Sour.
In a generation plagued by the explosion of artificialness, Rodrigo's music has been praised for its authenticity and vulnerability. The themes of heartbreak, self-discovery, and navigating adolescence resonate with many listeners, especially young women, and especially those who are going through exactly what I was at age 17.
My love for Rodrigo, in part, stems from how close I have felt to her throughout her career and my life. Sour, a tumultuous heartbreak anthem with heart wrenchingly relatable lyrics, was released in the weeks following my first breakup. Guts came just before my 20th birthday, a confusing time of redirection and not knowing what was next. It seems that, in my own world, Olivia’s albums are constantly coming at just the right time. From a heartbroken 17th year old to a girl right on the verge of adulthood, Sour and Guts have continually been the soundtracks to some of my own most pivotal moments.
Throughout the course of the new album, Rodrigo shares many vague stories that together form a larger picture. She paints portraits of characters, such as the effervescent Lacy in her song of the same name, a theoretical woman who is made up of everything that Rodrigo wishes she could be. In turn, this allows the listener to view this character as a portrait of their own insecurities and longings. Though Rodrigo’s deeply analytical style of songwriting can often feel like a pinprick to the heart of the listener, there is comfort in knowing that these emotions are universal, that there is a whole world outside of our fears and self doubts.
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