Olivia Rodrigo, You Seem Pretty Sad… For a 23-Year Old!

I mean, it’s not like Olivia Rodrigo has blown anyone away before. That is, unless you’re a 14 year old girl who just lost her Snapchat streak with her hallway eyecontactuationship, or a 19 year old gay twink who thought the closeted fraternity guy was going to court you. Rodrigo’s lifeless, drab, approach to songwriting has been the same formula she has been recycling since she was 16 years old and to think that a song as painstakingly boring as The Cure (stylized in all lowercase… give me a break) is receiving praise from critics and fans alike is honestly an embarrassment to the current state of pop music. 

Another Olivia Rodrigo song, and another metaphor for watching paint dry! Oh Olivia, we’ve had the misfortune of listening to your cries of teenage angst since you were, well, a teenager, and now you’re 23? Has anything changed about the guys you’re talking about? One thing that certainly hasn’t changed about Olivia’s music as showcased in her new single is the unoriginal, murky, and most of all BORING chord progression and instrumentals. Sure, I’m not calling Slayyyter’s songwriting the next Leonard Cohen, but there is value in what her production and delivery brings to her music. And yes, to compare the two, it is unfair. Slayyyter makes energetic, fun music that you can throw on at a party or the gym, and Rodrigo is making a poor attempt at getting high on the same dose of shitty pop music that she debuted with some five years ago. 

I’m a lyrics guy, and I always have been, but this doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t enjoy half-assed lyrics. I love xaviersobased, but that’s because there is so much charisma in the other aspects of his music. Rodrigo? Well… She portrays herself as this all-endearing, ever so deep character who is constantly going through some tumultuous heartbreak, and though being produced in a fucking lab and shipped out of Disney headquarters, the deepest thing that her and her team can come up with is: “I got toxins in my bloodstream / You tried hard to suck them out”... Like.. Are we serious? Yes, I know her audience is easy to please and to someone who likes this, well good for you! But, the serious lack of artistic progression in any sense of the phrase is truly mind-boggling! She has even sat and done interviews explaining the meaning for the song… Olivia, we know what the song is about. It’s about the same fucking thing that everything else in your dumpster fire of a catalogue is about. 

To no surprise, this song is another measly, sad, and attempt at trying to be some female rockstar. The sound of this track overall is another deeply uninspired pop rock ballad, yet derivative of everything that is awful about her previous records. And to those who argue that this song has its purpose, or that it's “good at what it does”, what does it do, exactly? I can see where, in her early music, there is some room to give her in the sense that it was a direct, diary-like, story – however it is painful to see that all these years later she is doing the same exact thing, Batman put down the costume Olivia, so can you! The same explosive choruses, the same dramatic bridges, and the same exact fucking emotional “payoffs”, for lack of a better word. She doesn’t even bite Taylor Swift or Lorde’s sound in a way that can be mildly intriguing at best, she dances around their weaknesses and the people that listen to the radio on their way to work are the ones that must suffer for her shortcomings. If Van Gogh was still around, he’d have a reason to cut the other ear off!

So, congratulations to you, Olivia Rodrigo. I am sure that you will profit millions off of the same algorithmic, AI-generated, one-dimensional music that you have been and probably will continue to make. A sad, stagnant, career that has entertained enough revenue to be called “art”. I’m not going to sit here and say that she is untalented, she can definitely sing (whether that be in the same formulaic tones and keys in every one of her fucking songs, but I digress). I am thrilled to hear her music while walking through an H&M and think to myself, wow, this girl who had so much potential let the early (unfortunate) successes of her career define her. As melodramatic and bittersweet, and maybe catchy as some of her music may be, it sucks. The Cure sucks. The serious lack of anything compelling during an entirely new album rollout is something that I pity and for the sake of all 23 year olds, I hope that everyone else has more going for themselves emotionally than the same recycled feelings Olivia Rodrigo has had since she was 16.