Expectations were high for Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album. “SOUR,” her 2021 debut album, won Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2022 Grammys and landed Rodrigo a whopping seven nominations. Its lead single, “drivers license,” skyrocketed the then-17-year-old to fame with the most first-week streams ever recorded on Spotify and Amazon Music, plus a top spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Rodrigo was lauded as a breakout star, a new Gen Z pop sensation whose influences were as wide ranging as Taylor Swift, Paramore and Carole King. She seemed to have a song in everyone’s preferred genre—or at the very least, one that tried to imitate everyone’s preferred genre—with “brutal” channeling a toned-down pop punk, “jealousy, jealousy” invoking a softer alt-rock and the soulful ballad “traitor” perhaps hinting at R&B.
I was hoping that these genre-bending/blending attempts would come to fruition in “GUTS,” an album touted as having heavy rock-and-roll influences. Instead, what I got was a watered-down wannabe rock record with a sound most akin to Disney Channel’s “Lemonade Mouth.” This is not to say that “GUTS” is a bad album; at its best, it’s a fun, campy homage to the alternative rock scene of the 1990s and 2000s. Alanis Morissette and Fiona Apple are rumored to be inspirations, though to me their work is a notch or two above Rodrigo’s in terms of complexity. Many reviewers have likened the album to a teen movie soundtrack of that same 1990s to 2000s era, which I think is a fair comparison. Like these movies, “GUTS” may have boatloads of style, but it lacks much of the bitter substance that made “SOUR” resonate with many.
Even at its worst, “GUTS” is never truly bad, but its mediocrity is almost more infuriating. Especially with her overtly rock songs “all-american bitch,” “ballad of a homeschooled girl,” “get him back!” and “love is embarrassing,” one wishes that Rodrigo had really committed to the genre. You can tell that she’s trying to let loose, but her anger is weirdly restrained; she seems more annoyed than anything else. The electric guitar and heavy drum lines in these songs are fine, albeit unoriginal, but their repetitive, poppy choruses don’t mesh well with the instrumentals. The one exception is the album’s second single, “bad idea right?” which is playful enough for this discrepancy to work. Lyrics such as “I just tripped and fell into his bed” are pure fun, and the punky background music only enhances Rodrigo’s carefree, flippant attitude.
When Rodrigo isn’t rocking out, she spends the rest of “GUTS” returning to her roots with slower, melancholic tracks that could’ve come straight out of “SOUR.” None of them is bad, and the rawness and honesty of “making the bed” is particularly touching, but in terms of sound they’re nothing that we haven’t heard from her already. I must give credit where credit is due, though: The strength of “GUTS” is probably in Rodrigo’s songwriting, and it is given its due in these more emotional numbers. In “the grudge,” she exclaims, “Ooh, do you think I deserved it all? / Ooh, your flowers filled with vitriol,” and in “teenage dream” she asks, “And when does wide-eyed affection and all good intentions start to not be enough?” It’s clear that Rodrigo is talented, and unlike the breakup ballads of “SOUR,” she uses “GUTS” to reflect on the price of fame and the unique insecurities that come with it. It’s a perspective that isn’t often given by pop stars, and I’ll admit that this was one of the things I really enjoyed about the album. However, I still expected just a little bit more from Rodrigo. While there’s objectively nothing wrong with these songs, I wanted her to go even deeper and take us somewhere new. Instead, she kept us right where we’ve been since 2021.
Rather than the rock star transition we were promised, Rodrigo largely sticks to what she knows in “GUTS,” which might as well have been called “SOUR: Part 2.” Just as Rodrigo herself doesn’t sound angry in the album, I’m not mad at her second attempt. I’m just disappointed.
