Olivia Rodrigo – Sour – Album Review – Francesca Morina (from Xperience Monthly)

Olivia Rodrigo kick-started her career on Disney Channel’s Bizaardvark and then went on to the Disney+ show, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, where she first showed off her songwriting skills with “All I Want”. The song conveyed a teenage girl’s struggle between two guys and her obstacles with dating. The song hit 119 on the Billboard Global 200 in 2019 and hit the top charts around the world. In January 2021, Rodrigo released “Driver’s License,” and then that same May, released her first album Sour, which made her the three-time Grammy award winner she is today.

The album delivers ballads and punk to show heartbreak and the struggles of being a teenager. She takes inspiration from pop heroes like Taylor Swift and Hayley Williams from Paramore to create an early-2000s-like punk-rock tone.

Of course, we cannot forget the song that went viral in the first place. On January 7, 2021, Rodrigo released her first single, “Driver’s License,” a song about her remembering the good times with her ex after, you guessed it, getting her driver’s license. The song immediately blew up and was on #1 on the Billboard charts for weeks during the year topping “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd and many more well known and beloved artists. This power ballad is more piano driven, heartbreaking to hear, Rodrigo also delivers a bridge like no one has heard before. The bridge layers her voice to create a more distorted, majestic sound to explain her heartbreak while referencing her driving like, “I still see your face in the white cars.” The internet dissected the song to see if it was about her former co-star from High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, but neither stars confirmed or denied who the song, and the album in general, was really about.

Heartbreak is the central idea of Sour: explaining the struggles she went through in her past relationship or relationships through ballads and strings. From “Traitor” to “Favorite Crime” where Rodrigo explains the toxicity of her past relationships (“Well I hope I was your favorite crime”), both songs start with a softer tone, using more piano in “traitor” and just a guitar in “Favorite Crime,” then going into powerful belts with even some harmonies to emphasize her dread. She even explains her jealousy of him being happy with another girl in “Happier” where she says, “I hope you’re happy but don’t be happier.” She uses more piano in this one, and her favorite, layered harmonies to create this beautiful song.

All but one song was written with her producer Dan Nigro. That one song was “Enough for You,” that Rodrigo wrote on her own. With just her and her guitar, she goes into the lengths she went to please him and how “All I ever wanted was to be enough for you.” Although not the fan favorite, it was still perfect to include it in this album.

Olivia Rodrigo also alludes to her heroes with this album. If you’re a fan, you have probably seen the many covers that she creates with Taylor Swift songs and old photos of her with a sign that says “#1 Taylor Swift Fan” on her Instagram. She also shows her love by using many inspirations from her songs including (“Deja Vu” which was inspired by the bridge from “Cruel Summer” and even sampling Swift’s song, “New Year’s Day” to write “1 step forward, 3 steps back.” She also alludes to Hayley Williams, who was most famous in the early-2000s, for her pop-punk songs with her band, Paramore. She took direct inspiration from Paramore’s 2007 single “Misery Business” to write “Good 4 U,” which actually went through a legal battle recently to give Williams a credit in the song. All of these songs on Rodrigo’s album are about the frustration of heartbreak and the struggles in her past relationship.

Though most of her songs are about heartbreak, Rodrigo also sings about the romanticizing of being young and a teenager throughout the album. With “Brutal,” she explains in distorted sounds and low register, the expectations of being a teenager and questioning when she was going to get her Hollywood, young life “Where’s my fucking teenage dream?”. In “Jealousy, Jealousy,” she goes on to tell her struggles with the internet and comparing herself to other girls (“Co-Comparison is killing me slowly”). Using more of the bass than any other song in the album, this one is more of a jazz tone than the others.

Her last song on the album is not like the others. If it couldn’t get more heartbreaking, “Hope Ur Ok” gives Rodrigo the chance to shout out old friends who had a tough childhood (“His parents cared more about the Bible than being good to their own child”). She delivers a comforting song to not just them, but maybe others too, listening while she shows perspective on her own life and how she has grown and matured. As Olivia Rodrigo has shown, some good things may come out of the craziness of life itself.