Four months after the explosive chart topper that was “driver’s license,” Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album is finally here. SOUR is an album about a breakup where the other person has moved on and Rodrigo won’t let you forget it. The production is incredible, Rodrigo’s vocals knock it out of the park, and her lyrics are emotional, personal, and relatable at the same time.
Let’s get Rodrigo’s ultra viral hits out of the way first — “driver’s license”, “deja vu”, and “good 4 u.” These were great choices for the album’s singles because they really capture the essence of the whole album. They set the sounds and themes for the album to come, and introduce the characters at play: Rodrigo, her ex, and his new girlfriend. Catchy choruses rumored to be about real life drama, (supposedly Joshua Bassett, Rodrigo’s costar on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series and fellow Disney actress Sabrina Carpenter) captured audiences enough to get the songs to the top of the charts.
This is not an album you put on shuffle. It is slightly chaotic in sound, ranging from slow acoustic songs like “enough for you” to heavily produced pop songs like “deja vu” to a 2007 alternative rock sound in “good 4 u.”
SOUR starts strong with “brutal,” a rock inspired song with a catchy guitar hook and lyrics talking about the insecurity, pressure, and angst that comes with being a teenage girl. Lyrics from this song made me laugh out loud because of how relatable a 17-year-old me would have found them: “I’m not cool, I’m not smart / I can’t even parallel park.”
After an explosive opening, SOUR changes course from electric guitars playing over lyrics about how hard it is to grow up to becoming a breakup album. The next seven songs are all kinds of “one note” lyrics wise. This is where Rodrigo’s three singles hang out with other songs all about an emotionally constipated boy that never treated Rodrigo right.
The album can be summarized by the chorus in “enough for you:” “You found someone more exciting / The next second, you were gone / And you left me there cryin’, wonderin’ what I did wrong.”
The breakup songs take a break at “jealousy, jealousy” to talk briefly about how it can be easy to compare yourself to people’s social media personas: “I kind of wanna throw my phone across the room / ‘Cause all I see are girls too good to be true.”
The album ends with “hope ur ok,” a song about people she knew and fell out of touch with in her past that she… well… hopes are ok.
Olivia Rodrigo has come a long way since landing her role in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (HSM:TM:TS). She somehow broke the mold of Disney stars with music careers staying family friendly until they are safely out of the mouse trap. Almost every song on SOUR is explicit and season two of HSM:TM:TS is currently airing. While this album did get repetitive after a few songs, Rodrigo had something to say and did it phenomenally. It couldn’t have been an easy feat to follow up a mega hit like “drivers license,” but Rodrigo made sure we know she is no one hit wonder.
She has established herself as an artist to watch and I can’t wait to see what she has for us next.