Album Review: Olivia Rodrigo, ‘GUTS’

Through musical theatre, all things are possible. That much was true on Olivia Rodrigo’s blockbuster Grammy-winning debut album Sour, and it still rings true on Guts — an even stronger follow-up that doubles down on all the delightfully bratty and witty punk-pop and pop-rock that popped up across her debut. In a recent rapid-fire interview with The Today Show, Rodrigo revealed that her favorite song to belt out in the car is Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and her favorite musical theatre song is “Cell Block Tango” from Chicago. Both songs — Queen’s rock opera for the ages and an iconic Chicago dance number that prioritizes unadulterated revenge for scorned women — make complete sense as answers. As a musical theatre artist herself, Olivia's vocal performance and songwriting abilities have a built-in melodrama and wit to them. Couple that with her proclivity for Rage Against the Machine and Babes In Toyland, and you’re left with Guts in all of its raucous, incisive glory.

Across Guts, Olivia amplifies the rock-forward energy of Sour standouts “Good 4 U” and “Jealousy, Jealousy,” and deepens her forays into guitar-driven pop-rock. Album opener “All-American Bitch” picks up where “Brutal” left off and finds Olivia trying to situate herself and her listeners in the new world of Guts. There aren’t any high school politics to deal with here, but Olivia clearly has a much deeper understanding of herself and how she is positioned in society. She’s arguably had the most lowkey Disney-mainstream Hollywood transition in pop music, but that dynamic still informs a lot of her songwriting. Disney girls are supposed to be the prototypical all-American triple threats, but what happens when they want to bellow f-bombs over rowdy guitars instead?

Enter “All-American Bitch,” a sly reclamation of the moniker that embraces all of the intentional mess and chaos of existing as a young woman in America. “I got class and integrity / Just like a goddamn Kennedy, I swear,” she croons, subtly alluding to the dark underbelly of the Kennedy Family’s cross-generational history. “All-American Bitch” also features a hilarious nod to UK singer-songwriter Natasha Bedingfield: “I've got sun in my motherfuckin' pocket, best believe.” If we’re going to down the road of that Kennedy lyric, what’s more American than being British?!

Then there’s the business of age. Olivia’s awareness of her youth colored a lot of Sour, and on Guts, the precarious nature of her late teens and early 20s permeates the record. “I know my age, and I act like it,” she scream-sings on “All-American Bitch”; a lyric that evokes the somber catharsis of album closer “Teenage Dream.” as well as blink-182’s What’s My Age Again? "Bad Idea Right?” is perhaps the most effortless encapsulation of how age and maturation guide Guts. In a delightfully bratty talk-singing cadence, Olivia recounts her inner dialogue over spending the night with an ex that she really has no business ever seeing again. “And I'm sure I've seen much hotter men / But I really can't remember when,” she quips over a mélange of Dan Nigro’s audacious guitars and pounding drums. “Bad Idea Right?” — alongside standout “Get Him Back!” — combines the tongue-in-cheekiness of prime Avril Lavigne, the spunky, cutting songwriting of One of the Boys-era Katy Perry, and an understanding of pop-rock that looks to the rap-adjacent delivery of Rage Against the Machine.

The more rock-facing songs are the true highlights on Guts, but there are few ballads that rise above the rest. While Sour sourced its backbone from its litany of forlorn ballads, those mostly take a backseat on Guts. Lead single “Vampire” still sounds like an evolved “Drivers License” with its bait-and-switch ballad-rock opera structure. It’s a truly brilliant song that expertly showcases Olivia’s understanding of pacing — there’s that musical theatre background peeking out again! — and song structure. The downside of “Vampire” is that every other ballad on Guts feels a bit lacking. “Logical” suffers from a plodding melody and grade-school arithmetic turned metaphor, while “Love Is Embarrassing” wastes a strong hook on a song that feels like a half-finished thought, appearing and ending in the blink of an eye. Luckily, the accountability-touting “Making The Bed” is a worthy addition to Olivia’s oeuvre of introspective ballads, and “The Grudge” — a rumored response to a prickly post“Deja Vu”/”Cruel Summer” dynamic between Olivia and Taylor Swift — flaunts the kinds of universal applicability that makes such a devastating song so immersive.

The album’s ballads truly impress when Olivia pivots and opts for a somewhat surprising angle. “Lacy,” a hoarse acoustic ballad that prioritizes ambiguity over autobiography, recalls both Tori Amos’ acute reflections on relationships between women and the more cerebral lyric poetry of Lana Del Rey and Lorde deep cuts. Leave it Olivia to figure out how to funnel generations of songwriting history into a single song. In turn, “Lacy” sets up a beautiful contrast to “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” a rambunctious anxiety-driven anthem about completely lacking social cues. “Everythin' I do is tragic / Every guy I like is gay / The morning after I panic / Oh, God, what did I say?” she sings. It’s “Teenage Dream,” however, that most successfully recalls Sour while still looking to the future. We don’t like to acknowledge it, but young adults and teens — especially young women — are very intimately aware of how their age colors people’s perceptions of them and their worth. When your age is a caveat but also a ticking time bomb to a period in which you will be cast aside for some shinier new thing, the pressures of growing up are only magnified. “When am I gonna stop being great for my age and just start being good?” Olivia questions. Once the song reaches the bridge — an ever-growing cascading repetition of two lines — that catharsis then leads to a poignant voice note of Olivia talking to Nigro’s baby daughter Saoirse Raine, a simultaneous nod to the innocence a baby still has and the childlike naïveté that Olivia no longer possesses.

Guts takes all of the best parts of Sour — of which there are plenty — and infuses them with even more spunk and wit, resulting in a sophomore album that not only makes the idea of a “slump” laughable but also effectively expands Olivia’s sonic profile and songwriting capabilities. Oh, and it also beefs up her catalog with some true arena-ready anthems ahead of her new tour.

Score: 81