ALBUM REVIEW: you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love
ALBUM – you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love
ARTIST – Olivia Rodrigo
LABEL – Geffen Records
GRADE – A-
The third album from former Disney star Olivia Rodrigo has broken through the haze of her previous sophomore album curse. you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love balances two central and contradictory ideas: being blissfully euphoric in love and grappling with love as a sad, murky sickness.
Throughout the 13 songs on the album, Rodrigo creates a colour tapestry of a relationship that begins with bright-eyed naivety and slowly devolves into a dark, depressing breakdown. The hints are there from the beginning, of course, but the listener is just too busy twirling around their room waiting for the phone to ring to notice.
Colours and viscera are a very well-done metaphor throughout the album. Rodrigo draws on blues, pinks, purples and black to outline how her perspective on the relationship changes. Particularly, the verbiage of feeling, dirty, mouldy, rotten, and that the “colours are all flat” in “maggots for brains” are my personal favourite examples of this.
I think this album highlights how Rodrigo’s lyricism can be hit-or-miss. Songs like “u + me = <3” feature the ultra-whimsical but otherwise uninspired reference to floppy hair being “killer” and to siblings sharing the same face. Groundbreaking.
Track seven, “purple” similarly had some of the weakest imagery (paths intersect, make a circle) and lyricism on the whole album. Catchy, but amazing instrumentals can only contribute so much to an album. Someone show Miss Rodrigo a Venn diagram, I beg.
you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love also features a career first for Rodrigo, and I believe it creates one of the best songs on the album. “what’s wrong with me” features The Cure’s Robert Smith. Rodrigo has historically credited The Cure as a large source of inspiration for her songwriting, which makes Smith’s appearance as the first featured artist on Rodrigo’s album all the more impactful and impressive.
The strongest part of the album is certainly the instrumentals that Rodrigo chooses for each track. From nostalgic electro-synth, dreamy orchestral swells and sexy guitars, there’s flexibility here that builds on Rodrigo’s previous sound in innovative ways.
All in all, I can see you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love solidifying Rodrigo as a versatile and sonically curious pop icon. Let’s hope the acclaim isn’t just confined to heartbroken Gen Z women. I’m looking at you, awards season.
-Acacia Carol
