Janhavi Gosavi (she/her)
If you asked me what was keeping me up until 12 a.m. every night this past month, the answer would be Olivia Rodrigo. For all the right—and wrong—reasons. On the surface, she appears to be your run-of-the-mill singer/songwriter with a pretty face and a broken heart. But as the clock strikes midnight, I find myself performing mental gymnastics to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes Rodrigo so successful. She lives in my head rent free, and I’m going to tell you why.
First starring on the Disney show Bizaardvark from 2016-2019, she is best known for her current role as Nini on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. I forgive the ridiculously long title because it provides me with the Rodrigo content I so desperately crave. In January 2021, she released her debut single “drivers license”, a breakup ballad which is rumoured to be about her HSM co-star, Joshua Bassett. The song was featured in a viral lip syncing TikTok trend as the internet became obsessed with decoding its lyrics, all of which skyrocketed Rodrigo to fame. Disney darling turned pop princess, the 18-year-old then dropped her debut album Sour in May this year. It broke streaming records and received critical acclaim, solidifying Rodrigo as a breakout star who is more than a one hit wonder.
As someone who rolled their eyes at the naivety and repetitiveness of “driver's license”, Sour pleasantly surprised me. It's chaotic, emotional, and existential—everything a teenager should be. Instead of running from her youth, Rodrigo capitalises on it. She has no intention of acting older than her age, crafting an aesthetic rooted in sparkly stickers, sour candy, and conversation hearts. Even her songs titles are strictly typed in lowercase, giving her the Gen Z stamp of approval.
She wrote a whopping 100 songs for Sour, and worked with producer Dan Nigro to whittle it down to the final 11 tracks. Earlier in her career, Rodrigo would hop on Instagram and spontaneously perform songs she had just written. That nonchalance speaks volumes about her as a songwriter; she doesn’t need to save all of her good ideas for albums, because she has them so often. In fact, it was an Instagram demo of “happier”, one of my favorite tracks off Sour, that caught the attention of Nigro and prompted him to reach out to Rodrigo. The produced version of the song appears identical to its demo, showcasing Rodrigo’s ability to churn out perfect drafts on the first go.
While she does these singer-songwriter ballads best, it's the Paramore-esque bangers I’m invested in. “brutal” and “good 4 u” are my other favourite tracks because they’re a vocal and lyrical outpour of angst and frustration. “I'm so tired that I might quit my job, start a new life, and they'd all be so disappointed 'cause who am I if not exploited?” she sings on “brutal”. It's a tongue-in-cheek nod to her Disney career, and I'm living for it.
And then, of course, there is Sour Prom. A prom-themed concert film that was live-streamed on YouTube on 29 June. Twenty seven minutes of pop perfection.
With COVID-19 placing heavy restrictions on concerts, most artists are opting to cancel tours in favour of online performances. Rodrigo could have simply made the rounds at different talk shows, or pulled together a lowkey unplugged version of Sour. But she chose to celebrate her album with extravagance and bravado. There's balloon archways, metallic streamers, and ruffles galore. It's a kitschy 2000s wet dream. Rodrigo’s Prom has high production value, yet retains the intimacy of a girl pouring her heart out to her guitar.
Therein lies the appeal of Rodrigo: the extraordinary ordinary. Nothing about Rodrigo is particularly revolutionary, but she does the simple shit so incredibly well. Honest song writing? Check. Killer vocals? Check. Compelling stage presence? Double check.
Being extraordinary at being ordinary can mean that everything happens in moderation.
Rodrigo is never too much of this or too much of that; striking a balance ensures she remains palatable to a wide audience. Her style is provocative enough to suit her age, but she is never overly sexualised. She boldly swears on her records, but would never say anything profane enough to risk her Disney contract.
This moderation also plays out musically. Some upbeat songs, such as “deja vu”, build themselves up to unsatisfying crescendos. The drums are never loud enough, and Rodrigo is never angry enough. I crave more breakthroughs, such as those on “good 4 u”, where she throws caution to the wind and lets her heightened teenage emotions rip her apart. Just when it feels like she’s about to lose her shit, Rodrigo reigns herself in, much to my disappointment.
However, she doesn’t reign in her self-pitying lyrics, which sometimes hinge on a “not like other girls” narrative. Her claims are banal, and have little substance to back them up. On “jealousy, jealousy”, she sings: “I kinda wanna throw my phone across the room, ‘cause all I see are girls too good to be true, with paper-white teeth and perfect bodies”. And, on “enough for you”, she sings: “I wore makeup when we dated 'cause I thought you'd like me more, if I looked like the other prom queens I know that you loved before”.
Yet if you Google Olivia Rodrigo, you’ll find her in makeup, with white teeth and a “perfect” body. And although she famously never attended an actual prom, if she had, she would have been crowned queen in a heartbeat. It feels like she is trying to brand herself as an outcast underdog. The facts beg to differ. Rodrigo is a thin, ethnically ambiguous, conventionally beautiful teenage girl. To be crude, she is an extremely ‘marketable’ product with universal appeal. To deny this, or gloss over it, is a disservice to her fans, who experience similar insecurities but may lack the ‘pretty privilege’ she has. I look forward to seeing more self awareness in her future work, if only for the sake of the impressionable little girls who idolise her.
Then, of course, there’s the matter of Rodrigo’s influences. Taylor Swift and Lorde have been heavily cited as Rodrigo’s biggest musical idols, so I correctly assumed I would love her music too. Streaming Sour was like getting another pair of my favourite sneakers in a different colourway—I knew exactly what I was signing up for. While some references to her influences can be considered homages, others feel like sneaky rearrangements. For example, Rodrigo’s song “1 step forwards, 3 steps back” contains the lyric “Which lover will I get today? Will you walk me to the door or send me home cryin'?” This seems awfully reminiscent of Swift’s song “Dear John”, in which Swift wrote “Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone tonight [...] The girl in the dress cried the whole way home”. It doesn’t help that Rodirgo sampled another Swift song, “New Year’s Day”, to form the chords for her song.
The Rodrigo/Swift parallels don’t stop there. Swift, Lorde, and Lana Del Ray infamously share the same producer, Jack Antonoff, who they have all created career-defining music with. Rodrigo’s producer, Dan Nigro, also produces Conan Gray’s music, who is another notorious musical child of Swift and Lorde. Does this make Nigro a knockoff Antonoff? I’m spiraling.
Questions of Rodrigo’s unoriginality plague me into the wee hours of the morning. Even her character on HSM feels like a different version of Glee’s Rachel Berry, with her queer parents and penchant for stardom. As the sun starts to come up, I feel deviously gleeful. I’ve connected all the dots and exposed her for the unimaginative wannabee she is. But the feminist in me can’t shake the feeling that if she were a young male artist, I would be less scrutinous of her.
My relationship with Rodirgo is complicated. She is living the life I want to live, while I’m tossing and turning in bed, breathing fire through my nose. Jealousy consumes me, as I find myself disingenuously slandering her music to my friends. Rodrigo has become a vehicle for my anger at pretty women and rocket fuel for my internalised misogyny.
Yet hypocritically, for my recent 21st birthday, I curated an outfit modelled entirely off of Rodrigo’s Instagram aesthetic. I wore layered necklaces and resin hair clips, and used my full lung capacity to scream “like a damn sociopath!” I love to criticise her as much as I love to love her, and that's credit to her brand.
While Rodrigo-the-person seems relatively simple, Rodrigo-the-brand is complex. By reinventing material by Paramore and Swift, she ages her peers into predecessors. Current pop stars are turned into icons of a bygone era, while our collective conscience registers Rodrigo as the shiny new toy. She has skillfully carved out an individual identity for herself, despite being so derivative of contemporary artists.
Such complications and criticisms are why I can’t seem to shake the thought of her. After a night of debating the pros and cons of Rodrigo, I habitually start my day off by brushing my teeth to “brutal”. The irony does not escape me, and I am forced to swallow a hard pill. For better or for worse, Olivia Rodrigo is a trend I am not willing to move on from.