Welcome to the New Wave of Olivia Rodrigo

Olivia Rodrigo approached the production of her third album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, which came out on Friday, with a specific goal in mind: make “the ‘not’ purple album.” Simple enough! Step one: abandon the shade of lilac that almost identically adorned her first two album covers. (She essentially distilled the hue into sky blue and baby pink for so in love’s color palette, but I’ll give it to her. Mission accomplished!) Step two was tougher, and presented a challenge that’s been looming over the entire current class of mainstream artists: actually evolve in a climate that’s becoming virtually inhospitable for pop stars. 

That assessment of the pop landscape might sound dramatic given that we heralded pop music’s triumphant return just two years ago. Early 2020s pop was dominated by Taylor Swift’s quarantine albums, which were virtually the only pop music to make waves during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and TikTok, which placed more value on songs (or snippets) than actual artists. But in 2024, there was a genuine wave of pop stars having capital-M Moments: Charli xcx had Brat Summer, Chappell Roan’s delayed surge was capped by the masterpiece anthem “Good Luck, Babe!,” and Sabrina Carpenter became pop’s reigning queen of innuendo via the inescapable “Espresso” and her blockbuster record Short n’ Sweet. These pop stars, each with a unique aesthetic and POV, put out music that earned real cultural cachet and critical praise. 

Rodrigo wasn’t on an album cycle in 2024 and therefore wasn’t central to the pop resurgence rhetoric—though she arguably kicked off the party when her debut, Sour, launched her into the stratosphere in 2021. (The record spawned four top-10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, with two reaching the top spot.) Rodrigo came from the world of Disney television—like many a buzzy pop star before her—as a cast member of Bizaardvark and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. But her lyricism was so adept and captivating right from the start that she straight up leapfrogged the transition phase from family-friendly fresh face to songwriting auteur. 

In 2024, however, Rodrigo was on tour for her sophomore effort, 2023’s Guts (a run now more remembered as a launchpad for opening act Chappell Roan). Rodrigo’s second album was undeniably a success—its lead single, “vampire,” debuted at no. 1, and the record was one of the best-reviewed major releases of 2023. But from its continuation of Sour’s pop-punk-lite sound to its recycling of that darned purple, it was hard not to feel like there was something creatively stifled about the endeavor. 

But regardless of Rodrigo’s involvement, 2024’s pop music renaissance was short-lived—though the fallout had little to do with music at all. While Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet follow-up, Man’s Best Friend, retread a lot of the tongue-in-cheek lyrics and retro-pop sound of its predecessor, it didn’t spawn anything with the staying power of “Espresso.” Carpenter’s biggest lightning-rod moment that cycle came when she was met with some chaste hand-wringing over the album’s depiction of sexuality and gender politics. The cover art in particular, which shows Carpenter on her hands and knees while a male figure pulls her hair, dominated the discourse about the record, especially over, you know, how Man’s Best Friend sounds. Chappell, meanwhile, was consistently hopping on Instagram to explain her progressive politics and her desire for a semblance of privacy—both of which you’d think would be seen as signs of a refreshingly down-to-earth pop star but instead received bizarrely condescending criticisms. (As for Charli? She shepherded Brat to a certain political campaign and is now flirting with abandoning the pop genre altogether.) From Madonna to Britney to Beyoncè, this kind of bad-faith backlash toward female pop stars isn’t new, but when the genre is more fractured than ever, it feels more tangibly effective in shortening the shelf life of stars who already have to fight for our attention. 

Despite not releasing an album that year, Rodrigo wasn’t immune from the same kind of nonsense. Some of it predated her breakthrough—from the start, she was pitted against Carpenter because of an alleged love triangle involving the two of them and Rodrigo’s High School Musical costar Joshua Bassett. (This was largely stoked by Rodrigo’s debut single, “drivers license,” which many interpreted to be about Bassett.) Carpenter was also opening for Swift on the blockbuster Eras Tour in 2023. Swift initially held dual allegiances to Carpenter and Rodrigo (she’s clearly an influence to both artists, but especially Rodrigo: “TAYLOR SWIFT IS THE REASON I WRITE SONGS,” Rodrigo wrote on Instagram in 2021), but a songwriting dispute led to Rodrigo giving Swift, Jack Antonoff, and St. Vincent retroactive credit on her Sour single “deja vu” due to its light similarities to Swiftie fan favorite “Cruel Summer.” Swift and Rodrigo have rarely interacted since, and a perceived feud between the two is relitigated whenever Rodrigo is back in the press. “I tried not to let it get to me or upset me,” Rodrigo said (after a deep sigh) on The New York Times’ Popcast last month when asked about Swift and about fans sleuthing out their supposed beef. “It was so long ago. I think there’s no use in harping on it. I just try to make songs that I love and try to be kind to other people and supportive of other people.”   

Accomplishing the evolution that Rodrigo set out for didn’t just mean blocking out the tabloid noise, though—it also implicitly meant divorcing herself from that stifled artistry apparent on Guts and her reputation as a millennial nostalgia act. Bright, brash electric guitars on tracks like “good 4 u” and “brutal” immediately drew comparisons to and Avril Lavigne, and as a result, she attracted fans older than her own Gen Z demographic. When gang vocals and other pop-punk signifiers returned on Guts hits (i.e., “all-american bitch,” “get him back!”), it gave the appearance of doubling down—your mileage may vary on whether you interpret that album as a perfection of her craft or a retread of well-covered ground, but it didn’t offer anything particularly surprising.

Thus, Rodrigo intentionally distanced herself from guitars on the production of so in love: “I love rock music, and I have such a reverence for rock music, and that’s all that I really listen to,” she told Popcast. “But I think going into it, it didn’t feel exciting to me.” Lead single “drop dead” offered the first clue on what that shift meant: It’s a shimmering, sweeping chamber pop head rush that maintains the hush of intimacy while tackling soaring emotions. (That dichotomy is also evidenced by the Petra Collins–directed music video, which affords the bedroom in which one dreams about their crush all the grandeur of the Palace of Versailles by … filming at the Palace of Versailles.) The song was mostly met with acclaim, but its chart performance was a bit tepid—it debuted at no. 1 in early May but has already dropped out of the top 10. It also sparked yet another bizarre moral panic, this time over the perceived sexualization of Rodrigo’s baby-doll dresses, which got loud enough that she had to comment on it on Popcast: “I just think it just shows how we normalize pedophilia in our culture,” she said. “It’s just this rhetoric that we’re fed as girls since we’re so little, which is like, ‘Don’t wear that because then a man is going to sexualize your body, and it’s your fault.’”

It seemed like the music was in danger of being drowned out by the bullshit yet again, until so in love’s second single, “the cure,” really signaled the artistic leap Rodrigo was about to take. “The cure” is a darker, downtempo swerve from “drop dead”—the verses are delivered in a whispered sneer and contain some truly startling admissions. (“Used to play a game in my head when I’d date a guy / Tally up the girls that he fucked till I start to cry” goes one of the rawest bars.) It all explodes into a chorus that is thoughtful and cleverly written but also delivered with the primal gusto necessary to land its revelatory catharsis: “It feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure / But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore / It’ll never be the cure.” It doesn’t have the guitar riffs or the kiss-off sensibility that have become Rodrigo’s signature, but its stakes and intensity are enough to make it feel like one of her most thrilling songs to date, all while retaining her confessional flair. 

That’s not to say Rodrigo isn’t still wearing her influences on her sleeve, but she’s certainly reaching beyond the millennial canon this time around. She’s cited new wave and post-punk acts like the Cure, New Order, Depeche Mode, and Siouxsie and the Banshees as influences, and those sounds are certainly present (literally in the case of Robert Smith, who is featured on the moody duet “what’s wrong with me” and has been championing her throughout this album cycle). And even though this is her third team-up with alt-pop maestro Dan Nigro—the most important active pop producer this side of Jack Antonoff—their partnership feels fresher than ever. They incorporate those ’80s synths and strings in service of Rodrigo’s decidedly modern, candid songwriting on a record she’s described as a “chronological” recount of a failed relationship from beginning to end. Take highlight “maggots for brains,” for instance, which pointedly uses brain rot as a stand-in for lovesickness, all over an “Age of Consent”–type bass line Or the kinetic “expectations,” on which she declares, “I won’t settle for a guy with a fake job / He seems so desperate for loving but, baby, I’m not” over Devo-esque buzzes and whirrs. From the soft romance of “u + me = emotions while completing an evolution of her sound. (It also helps that these influences suit her voice much better than the pop-punk pastiche ever did.)  

There are still some growing pains present—the Veronicas-indebted “my way” feels like a leftover from Sour or Guts, while the lullaby “honeybee” overplays its softness, a trap Rodrigo has fallen into on previous ballads. But so in love is still proof that it’s possible to progress the pop sound in an oddly oppressive modern pop landscape without losing the touch that separates a star in a crowded mainstream. Those clued into Rodrigo’s evolution will certainly appreciate the wink at the center of the record with the aptly titled “purple.” It’s a nod to her once-signature color, but Rodrigo pays tribute to it like she’s actually seeing it for the first time: “I melt with you / Your red with my blue / Now I see the world in purple.” It’s a sweetly romantic sentiment, but also an ode to blocking out the noise and finally experiencing the world in Technicolor. And like the rest of so in love, it’s still Olivia Rodrigo, but a little more vibrant.