Olivia Rodrigo: ‘Guts’ Review - A Rock n Roll Soundtrack of Broken Dreams
In an era where all new music sounds familiar and the next big movement has yet to happen, Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts is something to be excited about.
When the Disney star sheds her first layer of skin to become a musician, she has Taylor Swift and the big names written all over her, quoted in the credits. It’s a smart move for a new artist but dangerous because living in someone else’s shadow is never the way to go. She needs to make her marks. When the glory and heat from Sour wore off, she was worried that the best was already in the past. After all, the music business never lacks talent, but only a small percentage gets to stay. What she thought were dreams and promises turned out to be a burden.
Guts sees broken teenage dreams and betrayal wrapped up in angst and frustration. Coming of age crisis and the lack of answers are accompanied by burning passion and overloaded sadness, which is true for almost everyone her age. She can’t possibly pretend she doesn’t have feelings or boy troubles, but she is letting go of the idea that one must be someone and have all the answers.
“I'll blow out the candles, happy birthday to me/Got your whole life ahead of you, you’re only nineteen/But I fear that they already got all the best parts of me/And I’m sorry that I couldn’t always be your teenage dream,” she sings in “teenage dreams.”
Guts happens during that time in life when everything you know is no longer true. What if you’re not who you thought you’d be? What if all the promises and faiths that shaped your life one day collapse? There’s no going around about it, only the seeking of new answers. Rodrigo is punching a hole through the wall musically. She doesn’t know what’s on the other side of the wall, but she knows she can’t stay where she used to be, and she’ll find her way even if it bleeds.
Rock is known to be coarse and rigid while pop tends to fancy things up. You can’t really think of a time when the two ever be in harmony in a song. It’s either a transition or — war. Many tried to have both and got burned, being called a sell-out, but this isn’t the case with Rodrigo. She gives sad girl confessional pop an edge and an attitude while giving rock sensibility.
She might be the first person to produce that extremely clean scream in “all-American bitch” without coiling it up in some type of distortion or electricity, and it’s fucking amazing.
The titles “ballad of a homeschool girl” and “teenage dream” have the ghosts of Green Day perching over, while “get him back!” sounds like what Avril Lavigne would make if she was born in the 21st century. But the truth is, Lavigne and Green Day were for the Aughts kids who already had their fun, so technically, there’s not much space for either of them in Guts.
Rodrigo is for the kids now. If pop punk were to make a comeback in this decade, this is what it should sound like. Not rampaged with nostalgia, but something fresh and shiny to be owned by the new kids. It may be unrecognizable from what you know, but it’s fun and rebellious.
It’s punk and you know it.
“love is embarrassing” Olivia Rodrigo
While the definition of who she is is being challenged, why not challenge the definition itself? She’s sounding more authentic than anyone else in the era of collective nostalgia and formulated fun.
But in the end, no answers are granted. She’s still on a rock n roll tour bus, crossing the desert with heat waves in the backdrop, demons on her shoulder. If that’s not rock n roll, what is it?
