GQ Magazine conducted one of Olivia’s first in–person interviews, and it’s quite the read! Check out the entire article sourced from their August 4 website posting below!
Olivia on Overnight Fame, #FreeBritney and the Therapy of Depressing Songs
Category: Press
How Big Will Olivia’s Grammy Night Be?
We all know that Olivia Rodrigo is headed for a big night at the 64th annual Grammy Awards, which will be held at Staples Center in Los Angeles on January 31, 2022. She is an overwhelming favorite to win as best new artist and is the clear front-runner to win record and song of the year for her widely admired smash “drivers license.”
That song spent eight consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and also topped Billboard’s list of the 50 Best Songs of 2021 So Far: Staff Picks, where Rania Aniftos called Rodrigo “pop’s most captivating new storyteller” and noted: “With just one song, Rodrigo proved herself as a compelling vocalist and a songwriter well beyond her years.”
Rodrigo is also likely to be nominated for album of the year for her debut, Sour. The album is currently in its fourth nonconsecutive week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. That’s one of the three longest stays in the top spot of any album released in this eligibility period (Sept. 1, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2021). The others are Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album (10 weeks) and Taylor Swift’s Evermore (also four weeks). Sour also made history as the first debut album to contain two songs that entered the Hot 100 at No. 1 — “drivers license” and “good 4 u.”
Sour was included on Billboard’s unranked list of the 50 Best Albums of 2021 So Far: Staff Picks. Writing about the album, Josh Glickman was impressed by Rodrigo’s songwriting. (She wrote or co-wrote all 11 songs on the album.) He observed: “From its starkest lyrics of insecurity to its most biting one-liners, her songwriting prowess is on full display throughout.”
Sour has a solid 83 rating at Metacritic.com, the review aggregation site.
Rodrigo is also likely to benefit from the Grammys’ long history of favoring young, female singer/songwriter breakout stars in the top categories. This dates back to Bobbie Gentry, who wrote and recorded the haunting 1967 smash “Ode to Billie Joe.” Gentry, 23 at the time, was the first artist to be nominated in each of the Big Four categories in the same year.
Other young female singer/songwriters – Tracy Chapman, Mariah Carey, India.Arie, Amy Winehouse and Billie Eilish – have since matched that feat. Other young women who have scored big at the Grammys over the years (even though that particular feat eluded them) include Alanis Morissette, Lauryn Hill, Swift, Norah Jones and Lorde. Rodrigo has been compared to several of these winning artists for her music and artistry.
With all this going for it, Sour could win album of the year. That would make Rodrigo just the third artist in Grammy history – following Christopher Cross and Eilish – to sweep the Big Four awards in one night. Even if she loses album of the year and winds up with “just” three of the Big Four awards, she’ll still be in very good company.
SOURCE: Billboard
Dear Olivia Rodrigo: Ignore the internet. ‘Originality’ is overrated.
How do you do, fellow kids? It’s me, your friend Emily VanDerWerff, here to rap at ya about the concept of “originality” in art and why it’s overrated.
Why now? Well, the teens of the internet have discovered that Olivia Rodrigo, the 18-year-old pop sensation of the summer, whose “Drivers License” and “Good 4 U” have both been massive hits, is a big ol’ copycat.
At least that’s the allegation suggested by a viral video outlining all of the ways that Rodrigo’s songs on her debut album Sour sound like songs from other artists, notably Taylor Swift (whom Rodrigo has cited frequently as a key inspiration), Rogue Traders, Billie Eilish, and Paramore.
Let’s check the receipts! (Said the decidedly non-teenager adult woman writing this article.)
“NO ORIGINALITY, ALL SHE DOES IS COPY!” concludes the video, and after watching it, you could well be tempted to reach the same conclusion yourself.
I think that conclusion is worth being skeptical of. At least one piece of “evidence” in the video is just a sample — the piano backing track from Swift’s 2017 song “New Year’s Day” pops up in Rodrigo’s 2021 song “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back,” and both Swift and her co-writer Jack Antonoff are consequently credited as co-songwriters on the Rodrigo track. Swift has even kinda sorta adopted Rodrigo as one of her artistic children, which is sweet.
But the other examples in the video are probably close enough to raise eyebrows, at least a little bit. So consider my own eyebrows partially raised on most counts. (Though not all! Despite the protestations of several of my colleagues, I continue to not hear how “Good 4 U” and Paramore’s “Misery Business” are all that similar.)
Other viral social media posts have accused Rodrigo of ripping off key elements of her aesthetic, particularly in the “Good 4 U” music video, from the indie band Pom Pom Squad. I’m not sure “dressing as a cheerleader” rises to the level of copycatting, but the addition of long latex gloves … maybe?
Courtney Love has also bristled at the similarities of a recent Rodrigo promo image to the cover of Live Through This, the landmark 1994 album by Love’s band Hole. At least in this case, Love has occasionally seemed like she might be having fun with the whole thing and isn’t too upset about it. But you never know!
My skepticism about all of this doesn’t stem from a desire to defend Rodrigo. I am not an Olivia Rodrigo superfan. Though her singles are great, I think her album swings too wildly and too often between “pop-punk rave-up” and “plaintive ballad.” Still, she’s clearly an incredibly talented young songwriter who will have every opportunity to forge a long, fruitful career full of catchy songs whose hooks are hard to deny.
Plus, any blame for at least some of the “rip-offs” featured in the video should be distributed equally among Rodrigo’s collaborators, like co-writer Daniel Nigro or “Good 4 U” video director Petra Collins. If we accept the premise of the argument — Olivia Rodrigo is a big ol’ copycat — then shouldn’t at least some of the responsibility lie with the other people working with her who have surely heard of Taylor Swift and/or Billie Eilish?
The main reason I’m so skeptical of the “copycat” argument, however, is that even if Rodrigo has made her influences very clear, there’s not really anything wrong with that. All art is built out of other art, and what makes it original is the way an artist remixes and recombines the things that have inspired them. That’s all Olivia Rodrigo is up to, and while she’s being criticized because she’s a hot star of the moment, it’s a criticism that shouldn’t really hold water, no matter which artist is being accused. There’s a fine line between “plagiarism” and “paying homage,” but most good artists (including Rodrigo) know exactly how to stay on the right side of it.
Here is where Olivia Rodrigo succeeds wildly. She might still be growing into her songwriting abilities, and she might lean too heavily on her influences from time to time, but her combination of those influences and her taunting, wounded lyrics indicate that, yeah, she has stuff to say, even when that stuff is, “Don’t you hate it when your boyfriend breaks up with you?” (I do, Olivia.) That voice is what her fans — and many music critics — have responded to.
Art is perhaps the most powerful tool imaginable to let us gaze directly into somebody else’s brain and find the places where we’re the same and the places where we’re really different. It’s a conversation, carried out asymmetrically, where somebody says, “I feel this way. Do you, too?”
In the best cases, you really, really do.
SOURCE: You can read the full article at Vox.com
Olivia Rodrigo Has Rewritten the Playbook for Pop Stardom
Olivia Rodrigo wasn’t supposed to release an album this year.
The 18-year-old singer, songwriter and actress had planned to start her recording career with an extended-play release, a short selection of songs that would sample her talents. It’s a tried-and-true strategy for young musicians, who often don’t have a full album of material ready to go.
Then she released her first single. “Driver’s License,” a bildungsroman of heartbreak and teen angst, set a one-day record on Spotify with more than 15 million streams on Jan. 11. It reached 17 million the next day and became the fastest song to surpass 100 million streams.
On the next call with her manager and record label, Rodrigo said she wanted to record a full album, following in the footsteps of idols such as Taylor Swift. Rodrigo would have to record seven more songs in just a couple months, all while shooting a TV show in Salt Lake City and finishing her senior year of high school. She was undeterred.
“Sour” scored the biggest debut of any album this year, and Rodrigo is now the biggest musician in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Pop Star Power Rankings. She was the top act on Spotify last month, as well as one of the 20 most-popular acts on both Instagram and YouTube.
“It’s one of the biggest records out of the gate ever,” said John Janick, the head of her label, Universal Music Group’s Interscope Geffen A&M Records. “Sometimes you sign artists and you think they are great, but it takes time. There is every so often someone who comes and sits, and you know this person is special.”
SOURCE: Bloomberg.com
‘Sour’ Debuts at No. 1 on Billboard 200 Albums Chart With 2021’s Biggest Week
Olivia Rodrigo captures the biggest week of 2021 for an album, as her debut release, Sour, opens at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 295,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending May 27, according to MRC Data.
Sour also launches with the second-largest streaming week ever for a non-R&B/hip-hop album, and second-biggest for an album of any genre by a female artist.
Sour is the singer-songwriter and actress’ debut album, and was preceded by a trio of top 10 hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100 earlier in 2021, including two No. 1s: Drivers License and Good 4 U. Before Drivers License debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in January, Rodrigo broke through with roles on Disney Channel’s Bizaardvark in 2016 and Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series in 2019 – along with contributions to those shows’ soundtrack albums.
Of Sour‘s 295,000 equivalent album units earned in the tracking week ending May 27, SEA units comprise 218,000 units (equaling 300.73 million on-demand streams of the album’s 11 tracks), album sales comprise 72,000 (making it the top-selling album of the week) and TEA units comprise 4,000.
Sour was released on May 21 via Geffen Records/Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA). It’s the second No. 1 for Geffen this year, following Rod Wave’s SoulFly (Alamo/Geffen/IGA, April 10-dated chart).
Biggest Week of 2021 for an Album: With 295,000 units, Sour surpasses 2021’s previous biggest-week, tallied by Taylor Swift’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version) when it bowed 291,000 units (April 24-dated chart). (Swift herself has a writing credit on Sour, as the track 1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back samples the Swift-penned New Year’s Day, from Swift’s 2017 Reputation album.)
Dominant Debut: Sour captures the largest week, by units, for an act’s debut charting effort since the Billboard 200 transitioned from an album-sales only ranking to an equivalent album units-based chart on the Dec. 13, 2014 survey. It beats Cardi B’s debut studio set, and first Billboard 200 entry, Invasion of Privacy, which opened at No. 1 on the April 21, 2018 chart with 255,000 units. Rodrigo is also the first woman to see her debut charting album open at No. 1 since Invasion of Privacy.
Second-Largest Streaming Week for a Non-R&B/Hip-Hop Album: Sour starts with 218,000 SEA units – totaling 300.73 million on-demand streams of the album’s 11 tracks. That marks the second-largest streaming week for both a non-R&B/hip-hop album and second-biggest for an album by a woman of any genre. Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next continues to hold the record for the largest streaming week for a non-R&B/hip-hop set, and any album by a woman, with 307.07 million streams for its 12 tracks in its first week (chart dated Feb. 23, 2019).
Sour‘s Short and Sweet Arrival: With just 11 tracks in total on Sour, the album is the shortest No. 1, by track count, since BTS’ eight-track Be debuted at No. 1 on the Dec. 5, 2020-dated chart. It’s fairly unusual for such a short album to crown the Billboard 200. Of the 27 No. 1 albums in the past 12 months (from June 6, 2020-onwards), 20 of them had at least 15 tracks in their opening week, and 11 of those had at least 20. (Some albums will garner a reissue in their first week of release, adding further tracks beyond their standard core tracklist. And many albums typically get reissued weeks and months later, with additional tracks. So far, Sour only has 11 tracks across all retailers and streamers.)
One last note on Sour‘s debut: It brings just the second person named Olivia to No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Before Olivia Rodrigo, the only Olivia to top the chart was Olivia Newton-John, with two No. 1 albums in 1974 and 1975 (If You Love Me Let Me Know and Have You Never Been Mellow).
SOURCE: Billboard
Why ‘good 4 u’ is Rock’s First Hot 100 #1 in Years
When Olivia Rodrigo made her much-anticipated appearance on Saturday Night Live two weekends ago, the focus was, overwhelmingly, on the first song she performed, “Drivers License.” Over the winter, that out-of-nowhere chart-topping debut had instantly made her a national (and global) pop sensation—even the subject of a mash note by SNL itself. To say the least, she stuck the landing: Rodrigo’s live “License” was essentially flawless, amplifying the song’s vulnerability with fierce, wounded vocals that were somehow also controlled, belying her 18 years. The media agreed: A superstar was born.
After that showstopper, Rodrigo’s second song of the night couldn’t help but feel like an afterthought—and given its tempo shift, kind of a head-scratcher. But that afterthought is now sitting atop Billboard’s Hot 100. And this song might ultimately prove more important to the narrative surrounding Rodrigo as she continues to take 2021 by storm.
“Good 4 U”—an uptempo kiss-off to a former lover who moved on too quickly, and Rodrigo’s second hit to debut atop America’s flagship chart—not only establishes that she is more than a one-trick pony. It also affirms that Rodrigo’s budding stardom is bigger than any one sound: that as long as she delivers the hooks and the heartbreak, her fans will follow her anywhere.
The punk-tempo “Good” is a snarling rock number, notably out of step with the sound of chart-pop in the early ’20s. It’s not really rock-slash-anything. It isn’t alt-rock crossed with SoundCloud rap like the recent chart-topper “Mood” by 24kGoldn and Iann Dior, isn’t guitar-based trap-pop à la Post Malone, isn’t indie-rock with bedroom-pop hooks a la Taylor Swift’s recent creations. In fact, “Good 4 U” is the most up-the-middle rock song to top the Hot 100 in a decade or more, depending on how liberally you define “rock”—maybe since anthem-rockers Fun in 2012, or Kelly Clarkson in guitar-pop mode circa 2009, or acoustic strummers Plain White T’s in 2007, or even, Kurt Cobain help us, Nickelback in 2002.
That’s only part of what makes Olivia’s new single so delightfully confounding. Normally, the industry practice with an emerging artist, in this fragile moment when the public is still making up its mind about them, is to drop followup singles that replicate the breakout hit. This is a very tried-and-true formula, employed over the decades by everyone from the Righteous Brothers (who rewrote “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” as “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration”) and the Jackson 5 (“I Want You Back” made over into “ABC”) to Rick Astley (future meme “Never Gonna Give You Up” shamelessly rewritten as “Together Forever”), LMFAO (“Party Rock Anthem” rebooted as “Sexy and I Know It”) and Post Malone (“Rockstar” begat “Psycho”). All were Hot 100 chart-toppers, because the formula works.
By contrast, Rodrigo is now only three singles deep into her music career, all three tracks placed high on the charts, and none sounds like the others. Three months after her torch ballad “Drivers License” debuted at No. 1 (and spent eight straight weeks on top, the longest run of any single so far this year), it was followed by the ethereal, midtempo art-pop of “Deja Vu,” which debuted at No. 8—making Rodrigo the first new artist in Hot 100 history to send her first two singles straight onto the Top 10. Just six weeks after that, the hypercaffeinated “Good 4 U” crash-lands at No. 1. I’ll confess I didn’t see this coming. While “Deja Vu” did very well for a coattails hit, it didn’t duplicate the chart performance of its predecessor and fell out of the winners’ circle even before “License” did. Given how different “Deja” was from “License,” it was impressive it did even that well. “Good 4 U” is an even bigger sonic leap. The night Rodrigo played SNL, “Good” came off as loads of fun but felt like a bit of a reach—a newcomer trying on a different outfit to show breadth. I wasn’t alone; reviews for “Good 4 U” were positive but slightly less effusive. “The punky presence and crunchy guitars were maybe a little less convincing than ‘Driver’s License,’” wrote a reporter for Australian music station Triple J.
The track is full of ear candy. It opens with an uncluttered five-note bassline, played by Rodrigo’s producer-cowriter Dan Nigro, that’s a hook all by itself. It’s quite possibly my favorite bass kickoff to a song since Selena Gomez’s 2017 hit “Bad Liar”—and unlike Gomez, Nigro and Rodrigo aren’t sampling their bassline from Talking Heads. There’s a little vocal stinger—a multivoiced female sigh, likely an overdubbed pile of Rodrigos—that connects the track sonically back to the dreaminess of “Deja Vu” without copying anything. The verse lyrics are syncopated to tumble out of Rodrigo’s mouth. This song may not be rap-rock, but Olivia has flow. The chorus has the kind of pop symmetry Max Martin would endorse: “Well, good for you!/ You look HAP-py and/ HEAL-thy/ NOT me!/ If you ever cared to ask.” And then, heading into the bridge—I’m going to credit mix engineer Mitch McCarthy with this—there’s this three-note guitar riff that’s allowed to ring out by itself before the full guitar solo starts, a kind of classic-alt-rock dopamine rush I haven’t heard since … maybe the Gin Blossoms?
“Good 4 U” is the most up-the-middle rock song to top the Hot 100 in a decade or more.
Please forgive my old-school referents. Like Rodrigo’s “Drivers License,” which had music critics, this No. 1 hits columnist included, drawing comparisons ranging from Taylor Swift to Lorde to Billie Eilish, “Good 4 U” has enough signifiers baked into it to make scribes reach for their rock encyclopedias. The song’s punk-turned-pop feminine energy evokes 2021 Rock Hall inductees the Go-Go’s or the ’90s alt-grrrl stylings of peak Alanis Morissette. At NPR Music, critic Lindsay Zoladz makes a strong argument that Rodrigo’s new album Sour, most especially “Good 4 U,” is mining an emo and pop-punk vibe, channeling such Millennial-beloved all-male bands as Brand New or New Found Glory. Zoladz and several other critics, including Alexandra Fiorentino-Swinton in Slate, also hear Rodrigo reaching for first-wave Avril Lavigne, thanks in part to Olivia’s plaid-pants-and-pocket-chain stylings during her SNL performance of “Good.” (That outfit was the clearest sign of what era Team Rodrigo wanted to evoke; all that was missing was a dangling necktie.) But given that Rodrigo was only born in 2003, many online observers have pointed out that her likeliest inspiration isn’t any of these pre-2005 hitmakers but rather Paramore-frontwoman–turned-soloist Hayley Williams. Indeed, there are some rather damning mashups already making the rounds on YouTube asserting that “Good 4 U” is basically a rewrite of Paramore’s moshworthy 2007 hit “Misery Business.”Regardless of how much she borrowed from past generations of rockers and popsmiths, Rodrigo has already achieved something exceptional in just three singles: early status as Gen-Z’s most versatile new artist. The opening-week stats for “Good 4 U” are pretty remarkable. At radio, it already ranks 33rd at mainstream pop stations—even as “Deja Vu” and “Drivers License” are both still in the pop-radio top 20. Only Ariana Grande is working this many singles at Top 40 radio right now. In digital sales, “Good” ranks fifth in its first week, with 12,000 downloads sold—not as explosive as the arrival of “License” in January but about 60 percent higher than the first week of “Deja Vu.” And Rodrigo’s streaming numbers are most impressive—in a week where returning rapper J. Cole dropped his new album and dominated the streaming services with a panoply of tracks, Rodrigo’s new single beat all of them, with 43 million streams. A significant chunk of Rodrigo’s streams likely came from YouTube, thanks to the song’s Bring It On–meets–Natural Born Killers video, which is queasily watchable.
Audiences have bought in fully to the Olivia Rodrigo brand. Which is … what, exactly, if the songs all sound different? Rodrigo is surely aspiring to the stylistic breadth of her hero Taylor Swift—who, come to think of it, made her own move toward punk-inspired pop way back in 2012 with the Martin-produced “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” But Swift generally sticks to one stylistic palette per album (e.g., country, electropop, indie) and instead shows off her breadth in the range of the songs under that sonic umbrella. With the understanding that Rodrigo is still starting out and forging her identity, what is drawing audiences to her varied material so soon?
If we’re going to draw parallels between what Rodrigo is doing and all of her 21st-century forbears, perhaps we should compare her to one of the best-branded superstars of all: Adele. Until the British megastar deigns to bestow upon her worshippers a followup to her 2015 smash 25, Rodrigo is our reigning Queen of Heartbreak. In his very upbeat review of Rodrigo’s debut album, my Slate colleague Carl Wilson makes it plain: “Sour is a breakup album through and through. It treats the subject in a variety of styles, from folkie strums to shouty rants to tracks with a bit of groove. There are also plenty of recurring references to suggest the songs are all about the same split-up.”
Hmm … a single album all inspired by one cad who broke the artist’s heart … sound familiar? And the thing about the multiple chart-toppers on 21 was they also ranged fairly broadly within Adele’s soul-pop idiom: the modern Aretha of “Rolling in the Deep,” followed by the stark piano-only ballad “Someone Like You,” followed by the midtempo torch song “Set Fire to the Rain.” OK, there’s no punk song in there (though having watched enough foul-mouthed Adele, I’m sure she could pull it off), but what connects the song is both Adele’s voice and her voice—i.e., her wounded persona as presented in the lyrics. This is exactly what Rodrigo is doing across her hits: “Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me” (from “License”) begets “I made the jokes you tell to her when she’s with you” (from “Deja Vu”) begets “Remember when you swore to God I was the only person who ever got you? Well, screw that, and screw you!” The progression from wounded to wafty to wrathful is the most natural thing about this succession of singles, and it’s clearly as addictive to the public as the story installments Charles Dickens used to publish in the newspaper week by week.
There’s no question “Drivers License,” among the songs Olivia Rodrigo has issued to date, is the song for which she is best known. Depending on where she goes from here, it may well be her legacy. But the reason I said at the top that “Good 4 U” might wind up being even more important to her emerging narrative is that it confirms that Rodrigo is the real deal, to both her audience—two No. 1 debuts, out of three immediate Top 10s, is a stunning career-launcher—and the music business. The music-industrial complex is already foreshadowing that the 2022 Grammy Awards may well be The Olivia Show, much the way the 2020 awards were The Billie Show and the 2012 awards were The Adele Show. When and if this seeming inevitability comes to pass next winter, remember that Rodrigo went from talented fluke to capital-A Artist the moment she proved she could both cry out and rock out.
SOURCE: Slate
The Needle Drop: ‘SOUR’
I kinda get the hype.
[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5jD5agdfww[/embedyt]
Olivia Rodrigo Scores Second Billboard Hot 100 #1 With Debut of ‘good 4 u’
Olivia Rodrigo notches her second No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, as “good 4 u” soars in at the summit. It follows her smash “drivers license,” which reigned for eight weeks beginning upon its debut in January.
Both songs, as well as “deja vu,” which opened at its No. 8 Hot 100 high in April, are from Rodrigo’s debut album SOUR, released Friday (May 21) and due on next week’s Billboard 200 chart. Notably, the set is the first debut album with two No. 1 Hot 100 debuts.
“good 4 u,” released on Geffen/Interscope Records, is the 1,124th No. 1 in the Hot 100’s 62-year archives, and the 53rd to enter on top. Here’s a deeper dive into its dominant debut.
Streams, sales & airplay: Following its May 14 release, “good 4 u” drew 43.2 million U.S. streams and sold 12,000 downloads in the week ending May 20, according to MRC Data. It also attracted 3.8 million radio airplay audience impressions in the week ending May 23.
The track debuts atop the Streaming Songs chart, where it’s Rodrigo’s second leader, after “drivers license” ruled for four weeks, and starts at No. 5 on Digital Song Sales. While it falls shy so far of the all-genre Radio Songs chart, the track opens at No. 33 on the Pop Airplay survey, which measures plays on mainstream top 40 radio, where the song is being actively promoted (along with “deja vu”; “drivers license” led Pop Airplay for five weeks, while “deja vu” this week hits a new No. 16 high).
Two No. 1s from a debut album: Both “good 4 u” and “drivers license” are from Rodrigo’s debut album SOUR, released May 21. It’s the first debut studio set to spin off a pair of Hot 100 No. 1s since Cardi B’s 2018 LP Invasion of Privacy yielded “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)” and “I Like It,” with Bad Bunny and J Balvin, in 2017-18.
As SOUR has yet to debut on the Billboard 200, where it will enter on next week’s, June 5-dated chart, it’s the first album with two Hot 100 No. 1s before its Billboard 200 debut since Drake’s Scorpion, which bowed atop the July 14, 2018, chart after its tracks “God’s Plan” and “Nice for What” had already led the Hot 100. (Scorpion’s third No. 1, “In My Feelings,” topped the Hot 100 beginning the week after the set started on the Billboard 200.)
Meanwhile, in the digital era (since the advent of downloads and streaming), in which multiple songs are regularly released before their parent albums, SOUR is the first debut album by any act to generate two Hot 100 No. 1s before the set’s Billboard 200 entrance.
Albums with two songs to debut at No. 1: Billboard awards editor and Chart Beat founder Paul Grein notes that Rodrigo’s SOUR makes history as the first debut album to include two songs that have entered the Hot 100 at No. 1, thanks to “drivers license” and now “good 4 u.” The only previous albums to house two tracks that each premiered on top were by then-well-established stars: Mariah Carey’s Daydream (“Fantasy” and “One Sweet Day,” with Boyz II Men, in 1995-96); Drake’s Scorpion (“God’s Plan” and “Nice for What,” 2018); and Grande’s Thank U, Next (“Thank U, Next” and “7 Rings,” 2018-19). Those were, in each case, those artists’ fifth proper LPs.
3 perfect 10s: As “drivers license” (No. 1 debut in January), “deja vu” (No. 8 debut, April) and “good 4 u” are Rodrigo’s first three singles promoted to radio, streaming services and other platforms (and mark her second, third and fourth Hot 100 entries, respectively, after “All I Want,” from High School Musical: The Musical: The Series [Music From the Disney+ Original Series], reached No. 90 in January 2020), she is the first artist to send her first three proper singles straight onto the Hot 100 in the top 10. (She was already the first artist to earn the honor with her first two such singles, achieved when “deja vu” debuted.)
SOURCE: Billboard
Olivia Rodrigo Has No Intention of Being Just a Girl Next Door
There is no shortage of interviews and articles charting Olivia Rodrigo’s rise to fame. One moment she was an actress with a lead role in a mildly popular teen drama, the next—and almost overnight—she blew up on TikTok and became pegged as pop music’s “one to watch” with the release of ‘Drivers License’, which opened at and topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks.
Keeping up her winning streak, Rodrigo released two more stellar singles that showed different sides of the teenage schoolgirl persona she had created. The twinkling ‘Deja Vu’ and scornful ‘Good 4 U’—which introduced the world to angsty Olivia. Her ‘Picture To Burn’, if you will.
Rodrigo’s debut album ‘SOUR’, which arrives this week, furthers her introduction as an artist: a gutsy collection that one might not have come to expect from a member of the Disney actor-to-popstar pipeline. The album opens with ‘Brutal’, whose lyrics see Rodrigo put the perils of being a young celebrity on full display: “And I’m so sick of seventeen / Where’s my fucking teenage dream? / If someone tells me one more time / ‘Enjoy your youth,’ I’m gonna cry”. It’s certainly a fiery opener, one that might have come as more of a shock if not for the release of ‘Good 4 U’ just a week prior, which clued us in on the singer’s 2000s pop-punk influences.
Elsewhere, ‘Jealousy, Jealousy’, one of the album’s best tracks and a contender for its next single, also imbues a sense of social consciousness in its lyrics as the 19-year-old sings about “Girls too good to be true / With paper white teeth and perfect bodies”. In her interview with NYLON, Rodrigo revealed that the inspiration for the song came when she found herself developing an unhealthy relationship with social media—we’ve all been there.
Ever since ‘Drivers License’, Rodrigo has been drawing comparisons to Taylor Swift for her similarly confessional lyricism and knack for poignant imagery. On ‘1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back’, the two artists come together as the song borrows from Swift’s ‘Reputation’ cut, ‘New Year’s Day’. And there are little “Swift-isms” peppered throughout ‘SOUR’ as well. The lyrics “You couldn’t have cared less about someone who loved you more” from ‘Enough For You’; the folky ‘Favorite Crime’ that sounds like it could be plucked from Swift’s ‘Folklore’/’Evermore’ universe; the mentions of sweaters, trees and coffee throughout the album—just to name a few.
In the same way that Swift was beloved for her ability to make feelings of heartbreak, jealousy and teenage angst all feel universal, ‘SOUR’ is Rodrigo showing she’s got more than just one relatable character in her wheelhouse. She can be both bitchy high school cheerleader and rueful writer of love letters, so don’t be too quick to pigeonhole her just yet. ‘SOUR’ is both burn book and romance novel, and Rodrigo’s total package as the singer-songwriter behind it is truly once-in-a-generation. It’s hard to believe she’s only getting started, but you can count us in for the ride (even if she’s still working on her parallel parking). 🚙
SOURCE: Pop Juice
Messy, Unapologetic, Thrilling: ‘SOUR’ is a Teenage Dream
At the start of the year, few would have predicted that the most anticipated pop record of 2021 would be by a 18-year-old virtually unknown to the wider mainstream months ago.
Olivia Rodrigo’s ascent has been sharp: ‘drivers license’, the stirring ballad that gained unprecedented viral momentum, was released less than six months ago. Now, we have her debut album, SOUR, which includes three Australian top 10 singles.
Before ‘drivers license’, Rodrigo was known mostly to just the Disney community as Nini in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. The Disney-star-turned-popstar story isn’t a new one by any stretch, but there’s something refreshing about Rodrigo’s transition. She’s shied away from big-name producers, instead working almost exclusively with Daniel Nigro who, before Rodrigo, operated on the outskirts of mainstream pop working with names like Sky Ferreira and Conan Gray.
She’s also starting out with good-footing in the industry, revealing to The Guardian that she has full control of her masters (a big deal if you’ve been following the Taylor Swift debacle). What’s more, there’s no tidy, Disney image to be upheld on the record. The F-bomb is dropped in the first 40 seconds of the album.
Her debut album does arrive alarmingly early in her career. Billie Eilish, the last record-breaking teen to crash through, took three years to build towards her debut. SOUR was initially meant to be an EP but it was extended to an album as the magnitude of ‘drivers licenses’ success blindsided both Rodrigo and her team. With that in mind, it’s surprising that the record feels completely unforced. This isn’t an album stitched together in a hurry as success came at her fast. It’s a nuanced, raw and inspired project showcasing a newcomer who is too good a songwriter to simply be a fad.
‘Drivers license’ is the sort of song that can both build and sink a career; its success is so large for a debut single that you could spend the rest of your career chasing it. Rodrigo has made it very clear, however, that she has no intention of recreating it. Since the song, she’s followed it up with the jagged, left-centre ‘deja vu’ and then the angsty, punk-infused ‘good 4 u’. It’s difficult to recall a new popstar who has had such a varied initial run. Rodrigo darts through genres like an iPod shuffle, tying it together with her earnest, unfiltered songwriting.
‘Drivers license’ is perhaps the best song on the album, but it doesn’t stand as a giant amongst the other songs. ‘Good 4 u’ is tracking to match its success as a number one single in the US using a totally different sonic blueprint. The heartbreaking emotion that waltzes through her debut single’s bridge is translated into unadulterated rage on ‘good 4 u’, thundering out with rollicking drums. It’s just as effective, albeit on a totally different emotional spectrum.
That said, ‘deja Vu’ and ‘good 4 u’ are anomalies on the album: SOUR is ballad-heavy, with seven of the 11 songs fitting the description. None of them, however, follow ‘drivers license’s sweeping, piano-led style. ‘Favourite crime’ unravels over a gently plucked guitar as does ‘enough for you’ while ‘happier’ gracefully dances by on a bed of strings. The production rarely pushes explicit new boundaries but it rises and falls in all the right places with technical precision.
What makes these ballads better than most is Rodrigo’s ability to give it to us all — the good, the bad and the ugly. There’s no attempt to dull down her extremities even though she questions them throughout. “Stupid, emotional, obsessive little me,” she sings on ‘enough for you’, picking holes in her personality before concluding by song’s end that it’s not her, it’s him: “I don’t think anything could ever be enough for you.”
Relationship woes aren’t her only mode. On the heart-rendering closer ‘hope ur ok’, Rodrigo took inspiration from the narrative-based style of “country and folk singers”, telling the story of old friends she’s lost contact with. “His parents cared more about the Bible, Than being good to their own child,” she sings in a line that’s being perceived as outward support for the LGBTIQ community.
Pop music has a history of painting young female artists as hysterical for displaying the depth and breadth of their emotions. Taylor Swift was long made fun of for perceivably jumping from boyfriend-to-boyfriend, trashing her next “victim” in a fury of emotion on each record. She flipped that script on ‘Blank Space’, creating one of her biggest hits by humorously claiming the narrative with lines like, “I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”
Rodrigo has proudly claimed the overly emotional nature of her music, responding to what she calls “sexist criticism of songwriters.” “I’m a teenage girl, I write about stuff that I feel really intensely — and I feel heartbreak and longing really intensely — and I think that’s authentic and natural,” she told The Guardian.
“I’M A TEENAGE GIRL, I WRITE ABOUT STUFF THAT I FEEL REALLY INTENSELY…”
SOUR is engaging because it is so authentic in its depiction of teenage emotion. Its opener, ‘brutal’, doesn’t shy away from anything, declaring “where’s my fucking teenage dream,” over chopping guitars. She furiously unravels before catching her breath and laughing it off: “Damn, it’s brutal out here.”
That same brand of angst re-emerges on ‘good 4 u’ with Rodrigo letting loose in the chorus. “I’ve lost my mind, I’ve spent the night, crying on the floor in my bathroom,” she sings in one of the most cathartic choruses of the year. It’s been a minute since the days rock-pop ruled the charts (Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne and Katy Perry) but ‘good 4 u’ is so engaging Rodrigo may single-handedly bring the pop-punk genre back to the radio.
From a songwriting perspective, SOUR is rooted in ‘00s pop history. It directly and inadvertently nods to some of the best pop writers of the past decade or so, particularly Taylor Swift and Lorde. It’s hard not to hear Lorde’s intonation in the bridge of ‘drivers license’ or her dark delivery in the little laughs and gasps that fill ‘deja vu’.
Lorde’s sister reportedly reached out to Rodrigo to tell her that Lorde was a fan of ‘drivers license’. Swift has been a little louder in her support for Rodrigo, writing that she was “really proud” of Rodrigo on social media before the pair met in person at this year’s Brit Awards.
Swift’s fingerprints are all over SOUR. She and producer Jack Antonoff are credited on ‘1 step forwards, 3 steps back’ with Rodrigo sampling reputation closer ‘New Year’s Day’, using the gentle keys as the backdrop for one of the album’s rawest moments. The bridge of the song is one of the album’s key moments — which it better be if you’re using a Swift instrumental.
The bridge has been dying in pop music as song lengths have gotten shorter and shorter — but Swift and Lorde have always championed it. We can add Rodrigo to that list now as she delivers bridge after perfect bridge on SOUR: ‘Drivers license’ lifts to a new dimension when she sings “red lights, stop signs,” while ‘deja vu’ takes inspiration from Swift’s explosive ‘Cruel Summer’ bridge with Rodrigo shouting, “I know you get deja vu!”
SOUR sees Rodrigo join her idols as a peer — an exciting new voice that is still learning and developing in front of our eyes. It isn’t a perfect debut, nor does it feel like the peak of Rodrigo’s powers. When she errs more towards Ed Sheeran than Swift on moments like ‘happier’ she loses her charisma, and she doesn’t quite stick the knife in far enough on ‘jealousy jealousy’.
These are small criticisms, however, of a record that otherwise achieves exactly what it set out to do — to establish Rodrigo as an artist who is unafraid to feel it all. SOUR is unapologetic, messy and unhinged. To criticise that would be to criticise being a teenager. Her portrayal of teenage emotion — the extremes and the nuances — is totally thrilling.
SOURCE: Junkee
