We’ve been along for the ride with Olivia Rodrigo ever since she got her driver’s license, baring witness more than once to many of the life-sucking breakups, backslides, glorious vengeance tales, and growing pains of love throughout the young songwriter’s alternative-pop prism with a pop-punk bite. Three albums later, Rodrigo’s now in her early 20s and still growing — not out of, but perhaps beyond — her angsty emo phase much like we music nerds eventually do when our tastebuds begin maturing and absorbing a couple of decades worth of alternative history influence in the span of a few years.

That’s precisely where we find our protagonist on you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love as she chronologically recounts her latest ex-perience through producer constant Dan Nigro’s and newest studio collaborator Jim-E Stack’s hyper-glossed formations on new wave (“my way”, no doubt, and the accelerating pleasure principals of “expectations”) post-punk (the neon-gleaming “maggots for brains”,) dream-pop (“u + me = <3” stating a solid case as to why she should on that Soccer Mommy / Snail Mail tour,) and the finer hues of goth — all which might suggest she’d be a better fit for any guy with a record collection much cooler than the other pop stars’. She’s even got a co-sign of that from the Cure’s Robert Smith on their flawless duet “what’s wrong with me”, too.

The lyrics this time around tell the story of a young woman who has learned a few valuable lessons from past mistakes and applied them to navigating adulting relationships, but it’s not going to stop a Pisces from overthinking a good thing with a Gemini, and getting in her own way either. Those whispery, fluttering ballads are evidence of that, but when they crash down dramatically in classic theater kid fashion — which they do at their best on the alt-rock ballad centerpiece “the cure” and the haze-filled closer “cigarette smoke” — it still feels like it was worth something even if she’s got nothing to show for it in the end.

Highlights: “my way”, “the cure”, “what’s wrong with me”

Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is available now on Geffen Records.

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