'GUTS' / OLIVIA RODRIGO: REVIEW

There’s been a certain level of discourse surrounding Olivia Rodrigo in relation to just how brazenly — or “plagiarizingly,” as goes the discourse — she wears her influences on her sleeve. They can be found throughout GUTS without having to look too deeply in everything from its lyrics to its chord progressions. She’s ultimately a child of both Taylor Swift and Avril Lavigne, the former’s accomplished lyrical poetry and the latter’s shouty pop-punk choruses revealing themselves across the album’s tracklist, but it’s doing all artists involved a disservice to whittle Olivia down to simply a product of her predecessors. All artists have influences — just ask Taylor and Avril about Shania and Alanis — and attempting to chase the food-chain down to its original source is just plain pointless. Deriving influence from the world that surrounds us is good and healthy and even to be encouraged. It’s what’s done with that influence that’s important, and what Olivia’s done is very good indeed. 

Olivia Rodrigo is an artist of two halves; there’s her ballads, lyrically affecting and set to plinky piano, and there’s her bangers, laced with scratchy guitars and bratty lyrics. The formula was established with 2021’s SOUR, a perfectly acceptable collection for a debut artist, and she’s repeated the routine the second time around. It means GUTS feels a bit like a sequel to SOUR, a continuation of the same ideas rather than a new collection. She’s even opted for the same shade of purple as the color of choice for the album’s visuals. (Just ask Rihanna the importance of colour-association when it comes to crafting a Big Pop Girl album campaign — show anyone of a certain age Rihanna’s mermaid-red hair and they’ll immediately hear the opening synths of “Only Girl In The World”). Which is certainly not to say that we had hoped or expected Olivia to completely abandon the rocky soundscape that she did so well with SOUR, just that for her eventual third album we hope there’s a slightly more drastic departure in one direction or the other. 

The bangers are more plentiful this time around, punkier, fiercer, angrier than her debut. “get him back” is the standout of the collection, with its shouty, chanting chorus, whilst “love is embarrassing” and “ballad of a homeschooled girl” are uncompromisingly and brilliantly angry at the world in which they find themselves. “all-american bitch” is a gloriously confident opening track, and “pretty please” sounds straight out of a 2000s Teen Movie final scene where our protagonist realizes that things aren’t that bad after all. The ballads on GUTS threaten to sound a touch too derivative of her previous releases, and there’s a bit too many of them — the only plagiarizing I’d legitimately criticize Olivia of is herself. “the grudge” is a lesser “drivers license,” as is the opening minute of “vampire.” And it was mightily bold of her to use a title as loaded with pop-music legacy as “teenage dream” for a song as drab and uninteresting as this. 

But on the whole her pen is strong. She’s a wonderful lyricist, able to be either gut-wrenching or genuinely comical depending on what the song demands. It’s almost Lily Allen-esque the way her lyrics fizz off the page with scathing venom alongside hurried talk-singing. One thing Olivia or her music simply cannot be accused of is lacking character. We know who Olivia Rodrigo is after listening to GUTS. She’s unsanitized and clever, truthful and funny. And yes, she has her influences, but it’s a testament to how interestingly she’s molded and shifted those influences into something refreshing that GUTS sounds like an album only Olivia Rodrigo could make — and we already can’t wait for the next one.