Sweaty palms, broken sleep, heart palpitations – are these the symptoms of a cold or a crush? In the world according to Olivia Rodrigo, falling in love is a gut-twisting, soul crushing sickness. Being in love is demonstrably worse. And breaking up? Well, you might as well be dead.
Rodrigo’s third album You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love is a 13-track autopsy of a relationship; from its eager, breathless beginnings to its spiralling end. In the music video for “Drop Dead”, the album’s first single, we meet Rodrigo wondering the halls of Versailles, dwelling on all the virtues of her new crush: he knows all the words to “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure and looks like an angel. But the sickness has already set in.
Her anxiety continues throughout. In “Maggots For Brains”, Rodrigo leans into full-body horror to illustrate the separation anxiety she feels when she and her boyfriend are apart. (“I’m a zombie in my body”, “I feel dirty, I feel rotten”.) While in “Stupid Song”, she sings of the all-consuming, desperate feeling of being in so love with someone it is making you “totally insane”, skipping meals and sleeping fully clothed.
The kicker comes halfway through. The anger starts early in “The Cure”, with its whispered lament, “I thought I found the antidote with you”. There are hints of a further descent into hysteria: “I’m unravelled”. Here is the furious realisation that it’s over. Now comes the grief of accepting that it truly is. Less than 24 hours after the album was released, much has already been written about whether “cigarette smoke”, the final track, is a coded swipe at Rodrigo’s ex-boyfriend, the actor Louis Partridge. Acceptance doesn’t seem to come easy to Rodrigo. (“I regret you, what I let slide/ I resent you for taking her side” “I thought that we played the perfect couple till you didn’t want the part”).
Though lovesickness may be this album’s theme, The Cure is its loadstar. The band’s influence is a visible string throughout all 13 of Rodrigo’s tracks. “u + me = <3” is a musical response to “Just Like Heaven”. while on the brooding, slow burning “what’s wrong with me” – a song that could slip seamlessly into The Cure’s back catalogue – Rodrigo is joined by the band’s frontman, Robert Smith. (Rodrigo brought Smith out to perform alongside her at Glastonbury last year. They make a sweet duo).
Long-time fans may miss the screaming defiance of earlier tracks like “Good 4 U” or quiet venom of “Vampire”. But in her latest album Rodrigo sheds whatever remains of her Disney Channel origins. Despite its themes of lovesick psychosis and escalating self-doubt in You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love, Rodrigo knows what she’s doing. With remarkable assurance, Rodrigo guides listeners to the heart of her emotional turmoil, inviting them to inhabit it alongside her. This is her most psychologically complex album to date – and, undoubtedly, her finest.
[Further reading: Lizzo’s bitter return]
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