Olivia Rodrigo is the seachange the modern poptimist landscape needs right now. Not quite as concerned with writing for the purpose of pandering to TikTok sounds or sedated Spotify loops like so many across all scenes, her formula of mixing mainstream accessibility with an alternative bite instantaneously made her debut breakthrough, SOUR, a listen that stood out in the pack with bold print. GUTS could have done more of the same and still managed to be a huge success, but instead, it finds the songwriter going beyond the safety net by smashing through the worlds of mainstream pop and alternative rock past and present through her lens as a star who is still finding her stability on her way up to the top. Deprecatingly so, at that. It’s still brutal out there, between dealing with loser exes, falling back into bed with them, life under the celeb magnifying glass, and creative imposter syndrome, but instead of sulking in her status like the lot of stan-worshipped sad-eyed songwriters, Rodrigo goes for broke in having a blast in this moment with the thought of it all crashing down at her own expense. Those stories of the older fame fucker bitten at throughout the theater kid’s take on My Chemical Romance of “vampire” or his 6’2″ stature noted in her submission for inescapable hit of the year, the riott grrl-Beastie Boys mashup “get him back!”, are a far second in the narrative that is how Rodrigo is carving a space all its own for her curated style. It’s in the esoteric details she and producer constant Dan Nigro slip into its lip-glossed punk-pop hybrid, like how the guitar on the aforementioned listen’s bridge gets gapped with Lou Reed, or how tracks like “lacy” and “love is embarrassing” are perhaps, respectively, the first realized examples of a Big Thief-style freak-folk ballad or Priests-indebted dance-punk party blown out to a Hot 100 scale. It can thus be acknowledged that Rodrigo is no longer just a product of a post-Swiftian era of songwriters as had made up so much of the discourse surrounding her when “drivers license” crashed the charts. She’s in her own lane now, as GUTS has the audacity to go in the opposite direction of all that in being a true alternative to the culture like many of the women who inspired her journey, and it pays off big time.

Highlights: “bad idea right?”, “lacy”, “get him back!”

Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS is available now on Geffen Records.

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