Olivia Rodrigo chases hope in every form on you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love

I knew I was in for it the second I saw that Olivia Rodrigo cut her waist-length tresses into a lob. I knew I was really in for it when I watched her premiere the Robert Smith-featuring track “what’s wrong with me” at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound, and didn’t realize I was crying until I felt myself take a big breath in for another heavy sob. you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, Rodrigro’s third full-length, arrives amid the fallout from her two-year relationship with English actor Louis Partridge, the end of which was not publicly commented on but was pretty much assumed. The resulting album is like a sonic nail in the coffin, chronicling a first co-dependent relationship—an unfortunate rite of passage for lover girls everywhere—and examining it from every possible angle.

The record is split into two sides: “girl so in love” and “you seem so sad.” Rodrigo told Popcast how she went back and edited some of the more straightforward love songs to include doubtful tinges and hints of worry (the flashes of dissonance in “purple,” for example), like looking back on the early days of a relationship after it was all said and done, or pinpointing what really led to its demise. The music is straightforward in its chronology, but it’s so emotionally precise that you don’t even mind. It’s not just happy and sad. It’s anxious excitement (“drop dead”), rose-colored idealism (“u + me = <3”), being disgusted by your own obsession (“maggots for brains”), hoping for the best (“honeybee”), and subconsciously preparing for the worst (“purple”). It’s finally getting that true look in the mirror and realizing your relationship is the problem, even if you don’t want to admit it—that it never actually fixed you, anyway. 

But as ever, when there is new Olivia Rodrigo music, plenty take to the internet to compare it with whichever pre-existing stuff they think it sounds like. And sure, does the build-and-release on “stupid song” remind me of “Supercut”? A little! Does “maggots for brains” sound like it could be an Alvvays deep cut? You bet. Are they still two great, catchy, bouncy, fun songs? Absolutely. What I’ve come to appreciate about Rodrigo is the nuance with which she approaches her influences, narratives, and self-mythology; she combines the poppiest of the riot grrrl sound with the Brit-iest of Britpop and the synth-iest of electro-rock while keeping the piano ballads that defined her earliest hits close. 

And you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is teeming with classic Olivia touchstones: her rushed talk-sing verse deliveries, her rocking sass, her cascading melodies that explode from hushed whispers to full-throttle belts. She mixes her typical fare of half-ballads, half-rock songs by incorporating more new wave and post-punk textures. She soars past “bad idea right?” all the way to the near-arrogant swagger of “my way,” zeroing in on what’s made her so great and stretching it in new directions.

Hope is a recurring theme throughout the record, the “girl so in love” side leaning into the buzzy, romanticizing yearning of new love, while the “you seem pretty sad” side longs for peace and stability. “drop dead” sets the high that the rest of the album then runs on until there’s no more grease left to keep the wheels of the relationship turning. But it’s tricky, as Rodrigo’s reverie always hints at a fallout to come. “honeybee” anticipates the end early with the almost breathless “I hope I never see / What your face looks like going.” And though she knows change is inevitable, she hopes her relationship never does on “u + me = <3.” These are fruitless wishes, as we now know, but their failure is the whole point. She hopes for her partner’s love when they’re not around, that his last girl will leave them alone, that their lives aren’t irrevocably enmeshed. 

Rodrigo’s optimism becomes fully overridden with dread on the first half of the album, the key and hushed verses on “the cure” casting the entire back half in anxiety and tension, setting the stage for what would become the consequence. The Hole-adjacent acoustic riffs send chills down my spine as she sings about her unraveling. She clings to hope on the folky “begged,” looking for it when everything is telling her there’s none left. “less” is the most tear-jerking track on the album, allowing Rodrigo to recalibrate the vibe on the whiplash-heavy “expectations,” which feels like the sonic equivalent of being shocked back to life post-flatlining (“Yeah I’ve got hope / Yeah, I’ve got drive / I will not lose my faith”).

What makes you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love so successful is how sharply the songs themselves sound like the feelings the lyrics do such a precise job of describing. They’re songs that make your heart skip beats and fall out of your ass, and flood repressed memories up to the surface. Olivia Rodrigo has always excelled at translating emotion into melody, but she’s never done it with this much clarity, complexity, or confidence. [Geffen]

Cassidy Sollazzo is a music and culture writer based in Brooklyn. Alongside Paste, her work has appeared in Dazed, PAPER, Air Mail, ANTICS, and others.

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