Olivia Rodrigo's Guts proves she’s far more than just a Gen Z star
Getty ImagesSince her single Drivers License became a global phenomenon, Olivia Rodrigo hasn't looked back. With her second album Guts out today, Nick Levine examines her cleverly-calibrated, cross-generational appeal.
Every decade has its pre-eminent pop stars – from The Beatles in the 1960s to Madonna and Michael Jackson in the 1980s, and on to Taylor Swift in the 2010s. At just 20 years old, California-born Olivia Rodrigo is already a defining voice of the 2020s. Her spiky, emotionally heightened pop-rock songs resonate not just with the singer's Gen Z peers, but older generations too. "Part of her appeal is that she gives you permission to feel everything and not to have to dilute anything, which is very necessary after the last few years," music writer Rhian Daly tells BBC Culture, pointing to our collective need for post-pandemic release.
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Out today, Rodrigo's second album Guts is comfortably among this year's most anticipated pop records. Consistently catchy and often stingingly witty, it demonstrates her range by blending deceptively delicate ballads including Lacy, in which Rodrigo eyes up a rival who's a "dazzling starlet, Bardot reincarnate", and retro-leaning guitar tunes. The alt-rock-flavoured Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl offers a crisply unsentimental of social awkwardness that draws from Rodrigo's own experience of homeschooling as a teenager.
Getty ImagesGuts has already signposted Rodrigo’s musical growth by yielding a transatlantic number one single, Vampire, which begins as a hushed piano ballad before building into a mini rock opera. Rodrigo has said she was inspired by 1990s female artists "who aren't afraid to be angry and remorseful and like spiteful and snarling," you can definitely hear this when she crisply eviscerates an ex for "bleedin' me dry like a goddamn vampire".
The album's other trailer single, Bad Idea Right?, is driven by a chugging guitar riff that nods to the 1980s new wave era, but Rodrigo's vocal delivery is coolly contemporary. When she repeatedly asks whether reconnecting with an ex is a "bad idea, right">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });