“I lead a very private life, sort of,” Olivia Rodrigo told British Vogue earlier this year, “that makes me feel protected enough to be able to bare my soul in the songwriting.” With the release of her third studio album, You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love, a concept record following the course of a relationship, the singer has become as confessional as ever, eschewing flashy pop-punk hooks for depth and maturity. “I’m a sad shell of a woman, and I’ve got maggots for brains,” Rodrigo sings, all because she feels empty that her lover has gone away. While the singer has always crafted her songs in a campy fashion that leaves her figuratively smiling and winking at her audience, Rodrigo takes this skill to new heights on her latest LP.
On her previous album Guts, Rodrigo proclaimed her ability to both know her age and act like it, a premise she both continues and grows beyond on You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love. While no one is suddenly expecting any different from her, there has always been something uniquely and subtly powerful about Rodrigo’s work in that it appears she is being entirely herself all of the time, which isn’t something every pop star can necessarily say.
As much as she is massively popular within her own age demographic, Rodrigo has amassed a large fanbase with listeners of all ages, particularly those who were teenagers when the singer was born. Two decades ago, Rodrigo would have been mocked and derided for putting her entire self on display. Now, female listeners who lived through the ugly early aughts applaud her poetic sense of coming of age in real time, and rightfully so.
However, Rodrigo is older than she was when she first broke through in pop music some five years ago. While the undercurrent of her work has always been melancholy, the singer is more cynical now than on her last album, which only further sharpens her edge as a young female musician. “I feel right, I feel wrong, I feel totally insane / And I want you more than any stupid song could ever say,” she sings on “Stupid Song”, which is just further proof that Rodrigo isn’t about to make herself more palatable to express herself.
Elsewhere, she comes to conclusions about herself that she can easily make at 23 that she wouldn’t have been able to make at 20. “It’s a small world / When it only can revolve around us two,” Rodrigo reasons on “Purple”, one of the record’s most confessional offerings. “It’s crazy / I had big dreams ’til I tied myself to you / Now I’m all-consumed.” While young Gen Z women may now be more likely to reach these realizations about themselves and their relationships earlier in life, lyrics like these also resonate with older female listeners from generations in which empowerment was scarce.
You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love also marks the first guest appearance on an Olivia Rodrigo album, and it’s not from one of her mentors or fellow confessional female singer-songwriters. Indeed, Robert Smith of the Cure contributing vocals to a Gen Z pop star’s album seems like the year’s biggest musical fever dream, yet it works flawlessly. In “What’s Wrong With Me”, they sing: “My head is spinning, and my stomach is sick / Say I’m in love, so it’s hard to admit / I can’t eat, I can’t sleep / I think you’re what’s wrong with me.” As Rodrigo effortlessly describes the notion of becoming physically ill rather than being stuck in someone’s orbit, Smith’s presence only adds to the glory of both the songwriting and the current cultural moment.
Of course, Smith’s guest appearance is another smile-and-wink at the camera on Rodrigo’s part, since it references “The Cure”, the album’s second single and strongest song. “But my head is full of poison, and my heart is full of doubt / I got toxins in my bloodstream, you tried hard to suck ’em out,” she sings. “And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure / But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore.” Where Rodrigo turned more to rage in the form of pop-punk stylings to express her emotions on her first two albums, she has now ditched the gimmicks in favor of sitting alone with herself and her feelings in the form of lyrics.
“The Cure” is the album’s biggest highlight because it encapsulates the entire narrative that You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love is trying to tell: that no person or relationship is ever going to explain or fill the unexplainable void inside that exists no matter which version of ourselves we choose to present. Since this is a lesson we must learn for ourselves over and over again, Olivia Rodrigo’s musical appeal continues to extend wisely beyond her 23 years.