Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour is Teenage Heartbreak Excellence
Throughout her debut, Rodrigo knows her own worth, even when it's hard.
While not exclusively a breakup album, Olivia Rodrigo captures the tumultuous rise and fall of a relationship so clearly with her debut, Sour. She dives into the bitterness and resentment of growing up with ease.
Rodrigo’s lyricism shines through with the loss of a relationship that could have been in Sour. The quick turnaround of emotions and surprising virality of her songs enabled the 18-year-old Filipina-American to write a heavily relatable album within a matter of months.
The High School Musical: The Musical: The Series actress released her debut album on May 21 through Geffen Records — unorthodox considering other Disney stars like Miley Cyrus initially signed to Hollywood Records — to much stir and buzz. Her hit song “drivers license” was an overnight success on TikTok and broke records on Billboard and Spotify. But what propelled the song to success was not just the lore behind it (a crazy love triangle between her HSMTMTS co-star Joshua Bassett and fellow Disney alum Sabrina Carpenter), but the relatability and yearning that kept listeners wanting more.
On Sour, Rodrigo threads themes of heartbreak and longing through 11 versatile tracks. In “traitor” and “enough for you,” she sings about the bittersweet existentialism of growing up as a teenager and a relationship that just wasn’t meant to be. For the Gen Z audience, the songs resonate not unlike the work of fellow heartbreak figures Lorde and Billie Eilish. At the same time, millennial fans flocked to Twitter saying that Sour was what they wanted to have in high school. Unexpectedly, Rodrigo brought the older twenty-something-year-old millennials and young Gen Z high schoolers together through the universal themes of devastation. Angst and loss are overwhelming at times but so spread out that it feels like a satisfying release of emotion. Outside of the album’s immediate relatability Sour, as a whole, constantly changes pace from tragic pianos to shredded guitars, revealing the whirlwind process of reflection.
The opening track, “brutal,” expresses the dread of teenage life. At one point she complains,“If someone tells me one more time / ‘Enjoy your youth,’ I’m gonna cry.” On each riff, she drags her voice along in the same tone as an annoyed teenager’s “ugh,” and the catchiness of the downward chord progression only emphasizes the irritation. On “jealousy, jealousy” she exemplifies the classic case of social media envy, singing, “[You] got a pretty face, pretty boyfriend, too / I wanna be you so bad, and I don’t even know you.” Comparison is a major theme in the album, but Rodrigo assures herself and knows her own worth in this daunting world.
Rodrigo emulates her lifelong influence, Taylor Swift, on Sour — who she described to Paper magazine as the “best storyteller of our generation” — with all the common beats of heartache. In “1 step forward, 3 steps back” she interpolates Swift’s melody from “New Year’s Day,” which clings to the same soft pianos and vulnerable melody of the Jack Antonoff staple. Rodrigo is in a tug-of-war with her own emotions and a boy’s elusive attitude: “Like, am I pretty? Am I fun, boy? / I hate that I give you power over that kinda stuff.”
Rodrigo climbs into her earned spotlight by channeling her inner pop-punk angst with songs like “good 4 you.” The song sounds like the favorite Paramore hit “Misery Business,” with the heavy guitars, but instead of blaming the other girl in the situation, Rodrigo directs all those hard feelings at the boy. “Remember when you swore to God I was the only / Person who ever got you? Well, screw that, and screw you / You will never have to hurt the way you know that I do” she yells as she builds up to the infectious chorus.
As a young Filipina woman myself (who’s also had her heart broken by white boys many times), I could intimately relate to the pitiful and long process to get over that white boy. Her pining for Bassett could well translate into the plethora of stories that young women and non-binary people of color have been through. In the aftermath of the break up, you become self-conscious over every interaction you had with them, questioning yourself and your self-worth — especially when they leave you for a white woman. You compare yourself to the surrounding Eurocentric beauty standards such as the blonde girl in “drivers license” or her own friends in “jealousy, jealousy.” Though the topic of identity isn’t so blatant throughout the rest of the album, the surrounding themes are in the same vein as “Your Best American Girl” by Mitski or “Boyish” by Japanese Breakfast, where the object of your affection is distracted and always unattainable.
There’s a big rush when Rodrigo’s singles shine, but the album stagnates when somber songs like “enough for you” and “happier” follow one after the other. They’re placeholders for reflection and longing, but they blend together well enough that these tracks could be mistaken as the same song. Even the delicate finger picked guitar in “enough for you” sounds like a background let-down song in a movie. The soft tunes have luster in the lyrical themes, but they aren’t emotionally charged sonically enough to be stand outs.
The album’s themes may be repetitive at times, but she makes it clear that these emotions and thoughts sincerely stayed on her mind. Overall, Rodrigo achieves a cohesive storyline. It might be because of the artists who paved the way for her, and the fact that relatability impacts a listener’s tolerance for heartbreak and yearning. It could be jolting at times to switch from a soft ballad of an “I could have done better” song to a hard “fuck you” song. But that’s also part of the thrill. While her songs weren’t intentionally made to be viral, they have the perfect formula to resonate with her target audience online. Young love is ruthless and a trip to go through, and to process the inevitable end. Unpredictability makes room for creativity, and Olivia Rodrigo ushers those traits in, even if she wants to be, like, messy in the process.
