Olivia Rodrigo: Rock in Lace

Electric guitars accompany drums and then Olivia Rodrigo sings: “The cat took my tongue, I guess I’m not close to anyone.”

Olivia Rodrigo – Photo: Byrdie

Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl, the midpoint of Rodrigo’s Guts album, which was released this Friday, has us wondering: how long has it been since we’ve had a real rock hit?

How long has it been since we heard the electric guitar taking the lead in music?

And then here it is, on the album of a 20-year-old singer with the looks of a princess, whose debut album had all the songs certified platinum or higher.

Olivia Rodrigo – ballad of a homeschooled girl (Official Lyric Video)

Around the same time Guts was released, one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands of all time, The Rolling Stones , also announced the release of a new song after 18 years, Angry.

The legendary Mick Jagger’s voice is like the bite of an angry king cobra and then if you listen to Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl, a song also full of anger but the anger of a teenage girl who was homeschooled instead of going to school, no friends, no one to play with, when she screams:

“The party is over and I’m not having any fun, I know, I know, I know”, I suddenly wondered if a baby cobra was breaking its shell?

Guts opens with All American Bitch, a punk rock track that can be reminiscent of Green Day: it initially fools the listener with a gentle feel, then the drums suddenly burst in, cracking the outer shell, revealing the ferocity within.

The structure of the mix seems to condense the way we see Olivia Rodrigo: at first glance, she’s an “America’s sweetheart,” but up close, she’s a rock knight fighting off vampires

Those vampires are the overwhelming emotions of adolescence when they begin to know the opposite shades of love (“I want to break your heart but then I want you to come back” – the song Get Him Back!), begin to realize they are lonely, begin to be disappointed by people and make people disappointed, are the frustrations of a young star – or rather, a young female star – when suddenly becoming the idol of many people, but “people love me like I’m a tourist attraction”.

Compared to his debut album, Guts has reached a new level of roughness, perhaps even the roughest track is “wrapped” in soft layers like lace like the song Lacy (lacy also means lace, lace), a song about admiration mixed with jealousy when standing in front of another woman who is better than you in every way.

Tonally, Lacy is a sweet lull, and the opening lyrics are loving as the lyrical character expresses admiration for a girl with skin like a mille-de-lis and eyes like daisies.

But gradually the feelings of envy, jealousy and insecurity were revealed. Olivia Rodrigo adjusted her normally sweet, metallic voice to a caressing whisper, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear the lyrics expressing her hidden hatred.

Olivia Rodrigo

Some viewers immediately interpreted Lacy as a song about Taylor Swift – Rodrigo’s idol, but ironically, the person she is often compared to.

Previously, the bridge in the song Deja Vu from Rodrigo’s debut album was pointed out to have similarities with the song Cruel Summer by Swift and Jack Antonoff.

Not ignoring or denying, Rodrigo added Swift and Antonoff’s names as co-writers of the song and contacted them to pay them half of the royalties.

Regardless of whether or not there was any discord between Rodrigo and Swift, Rodrigo’s gentle acceptance and correction of his mistakes rather than stubbornly denying them is an example of an artist with dignity and self-respect, something we don’t always see in young artists.

Guts’ opening line is: “I’m light as a feather and hard as a board.” In music and in life, Rodrigo shows that she’s strong enough to be soft and strong enough to be tough, and more importantly, knows when to be, what can she not achieve?