In the song “Mabul,” Israeli singer Keren Peles wrote: “Someone said all songs are the same, worshiping love and not talking about anything else.”
On Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, "you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love", stylized, naturally, in lowercase, that is true, but only partly. Rodrigo did write an album about love, together with Dan Nigro, her regular creative partner, but it does not sound like her previous songs, or like much else in current mainstream pop.
Her breakup in recent months with British actor Louis Partridge turned the album into a darker, more reflective work, one that examines the bleak sides of love and heartbreak. Musically, Rodrigo also sharpens her identity here, leaving behind the pop-punk sound most closely associated with her and moving toward post-punk, new wave and a deep nostalgia for the sound of the 1980s.
The result is an excellent album, one that makes clear how much Rodrigo is a pop star almost "by accident". The league she is aiming for is different: more ambitious, more emotional and far more interesting.
Rodrigo did not set out to write a breakup album. In an interview with The New York Times podcast, she said she wanted to prove to herself that she did not have to be angry or sad in order to write good songs.
After her previous album, GUTS, was released, she even added a love song for Partridge called "so american", describing their relationship, how he laughs at her jokes and calls her “so American.” But after she wrote additional love songs, the two broke up.
Rodrigo and Nigro decided to reshape the romantic songs they had already written and add the perspective she now had, knowing how the story ended. “I was really inspired by all of the ways in which love makes you insane and miserable".
Listening to the album, those ways are everywhere. In the opening track, Rodrigo says that if her lover kisses her, she might drop dead. In "maggots for brains", she describes her mind turning to mush. At first, these could sound like the dramatic declarations of a young woman wildly in love. But when heard literally, they reveal how unsettling it can be to feel that way.
The album itself is structured like a full story of falling in love and falling apart. Its first half is the “girl so in love”: the magic, the happiness, the faster and more uplifting songs. The second half is the “you seem pretty sad”: darker, more pensive and less energetic. But even in the first half, cracks appear in the relationship. In retrospect, those cracks sound like warnings, small prophecies of heartbreak waiting to come true.
The album also includes the first song Rodrigo has ever performed in collaboration with another singer. The honor goes to Robert Smith, the frontman of The Cure and an icon of British post-punk and synthesizer melancholy.
Rodrigo hosted Smith onstage at her Glastonbury performance last year, and the two seem to have formed a real musical friendship. Choosing him for the album is also a statement of intent. Rodrigo wants to be seen alongside the rock figures who shaped her taste, and she continues to move further away from her early image as a Disney Channel child star.
Still, Rodrigo remains part of a highly polished pop machine. No matter how alternative the album sounds, or how much attention it gives to surprising writing and unusual melodies, such as the fascinating moment at the end of "drop dead", when the guitar seems to “break” into a brief, unexpected mini-solo, the way Rodrigo operates inside the music industry is still that of a commercial pop star.
Over the weekend, Instagram launched a special font for Stories and Reels inspired by the album. Across the U.S., promotional walls for the record went up under the sponsorship of a credit card company. Rodrigo moved between interviews, TV appearances, a surprise set at a major festival and, finally, the announcement of an expensive world tour.
Those moves mark the difference between then and now. These are no longer the 1980s. If an artist like Rodrigo might once have been dismissed as “commercial” for such marketing choices, today she is simply following the obvious rulebook for how new music is promoted.