Olivia Rodrigo - Guts Review

It takes guts to release an album this good, but even more guts to admit your fears so truthfully within it.

When Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album SOUR was released in 2021, its social impact twinkled on the edges of my radar, propelled by the success of ‘drivers licence’ and her rise to fame in High School Musical: The Series. Only two years on, it’s impossible to ignore her 2023 album GUTS; the album’s deep moody purple is everywhere you look, as are the soaring reviews. Pitchfork gave GUTS a staggering 8/10, and NME a perfect five stars. 

So, what do I think? This album is as tumultuous and unhinged as being 20, which pivots as both its greatest strength and weakness. The blistering, rebellious pop-punk tracks ooze satire and are bolstered by catchy choruses that feel grand in their sing-along catharsis. The opening track, ‘all-american bitch’, is one of the best tracks of the album, battling grungy guitar with harmonised melodies that sound like church bells ringing in the face of sexist expectations. This is followed by ‘bad idea right?’ a playful, heavily mono-syllabic groove that uses a sustained scream for instrumentation. Later, hangxiety anthem ‘ballad of a home-school girl’ wows with impressive production and a head-banging beat. ‘Can’t think of a third line!’ she sings gleefully in the outro, which speaks to one of the greatest criticisms of her music; the depth and reach of her lyricism isn’t quite there, but Rodrigo isn’t shying away from this. Perhaps the ease and accessibility of her shared language humanises the vulnerability of her hyperbolic stories. Her language lacks the experience we can’t expect her to yet have. 

Though most of the album’s formulaic make-up comes across as enjoyably self-indulgent - take ‘get him back!’ joyfully hinging on an over-explained double entendre - in the second half of the album it falls a little flat. The ‘drivers’ licence’ rhetoric present in slow song ‘making the bed’ seems tired, the similes of ‘lacy’ a little skewed (‘skin like puff pastry’ comes to mind) and the fade-out ending of ‘pretty isn’t pretty’ encapsulates its overall forgettability. This speaks to the chasm of sound between her punch-the-air chants and her pedal-heavy piano ballads that splits the album in two, making for a diverse, if not confused, identity. Rodrigo can write and sing a ballad better than most, but I feel almost over-saturated by charming piano intros and weeping violins by the album's close. 

That being said - what does everyone else think? GUTS is an admirable, riotous, and powerfully self-aware piece of work, and it’s a shame the consensus of my Twitter feed refuses to see this as a success. When a young female artist performs at the top of her field the internet historically has two reactions. First, Olivia has been endlessly compared to female counterparts, such as Paramore’s Hayley Williams or old-school Avril Lavigne, whose 2002 album ‘Complicated’ was released when she was only 18; of course, this says, only one woman is allowed to be great at any one thing. One only need listen to Paramore’s debut, All we Know is Falling, and compare scratchy screamo backing vocals with Rodrigo’s theatrical vocal personality to see this argument crumble. ‘I feel light as a feather’ the album opens, foreshadowing this discourse of comparison, a tendency to see women as anything other than authentic. 

Second, other listeners find Rodrigo’s success overbearing, hurtful or obnoxious, and react with socially sanctioned misogyny through name-calling and avalanching hate disguised as taste difference. Here, Rodrigo comes to represent something larger than herself. She represents young women having a voice, a foot in the door, an autonomous body of their own. Celebrating evident talent becomes another necessity through which we can rally against sexism in a toxic industry and across the booming digital age. GUTS is intelligently aware of this; the final track and instant hit, ‘teenage dream’, ends with the unanswered question ‘they all say that it gets better but what if I don’t?’. She tells us tactfully, ‘I am constantly fighting an impenetrable, unknowable ‘they’, symbolic of an unrealistic and infinitely unbeatable standard. Are you on their side or mine?’ I know my answer. It takes guts to release an album this good, but even more guts to admit your fears so truthfully within it. Rodrigo can slip up as many times as she needs, and she’ll still have a fan in me.