Olivia Rodrigo's “SOUR” is the Album I Needed as a Teenager

At twenty-one years old, I haven’t been out of my teenage years for very long, but with the rise of Gen Z’s collective personality exhibiting itself full force on social media, it’s becoming more apparent to me, and maybe to other folks born at the tail end of the last century, how deeply I occupy that middle divide between millennials and Gen Z. I didn’t grow up watching classic 90s sitcoms as they aired but I also don’t completely understand the hype of wide-leg jeans and middle parts rather than skinny and side. Still, as much as Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album SOUR caters to this Gen Z palette, it’s the perfect album for a generation hopper like me, who found so much of my younger self resonating with Rodrigo’s honest exploration of vulnerability, insecurity, and heartbreak, and wished that I’d heard it a few years ago when I was a teenager, too. 

Since she dropped “drivers license” back in January, Rodrigo, barely eighteen but already exhibiting incredible lyricism and production skills, has been nothing but surprises, not to mention an inspiration for other young women of color. 

From repeatedly breaking Spotify records to debuting on Billboard Hot 100 to attracting so much attention from her long-time idol Taylor Swift that they met and took a photo at the Brit Awards, Rodrigo has made a name for herself as one of today’s best new pop stars. Though she’s been met with people questioning the hype, SOUR has only cemented that status.   

After all, when was the last time you heard swearing in a Disney kid’s music while they were still appearing on the network? I grew up with that same network in the late 2000s forcing the Jonas Brothers to wear purity rings in public and overall holding their child stars to such clean-cut, family-friendly standards to the point of suffocation. So in 2021, hearing a High School Musical: The Musical: The Series main cast member screaming “where’s my f-cking teenage dream?” over the heavy grunge sensibility of “brutal” sounds almost radical (especially because it’s likely a direct call out to Katy Perry’s rose-colored single “Teenage Dream” (2010)). 

If we think back to other albums released by Disney kids in the height of their child stardom, namely Miley Cyrus’s Breakout (2008) and Demi Lovato’s Don’t Forget (2008) and Here We Go Again (2009), Rodrigo’s pop-rock influences cater to the intrinsic emo tendencies of adolescence while also echoing and participating in a much bigger legacy, which is why she resonates so deeply with Gen Z, millennials, and everyone in between. 

Again, take “brutal”, one of the all-time strongest openings of an album and the most intense song on the tracklist. We’re eased into a false sense of security with its quiet chorus of violins, only to be interrupted seventeen seconds in with heavy guitars and Rodrigo revealing her deepest, rawest secrets: “I’m so insecure, I think / That I’ll die before I drink.” 

As a rejection of all the clichés we’ve been fed from music and movies and the adults who remember what it was like to be a teen but in a different decade, it’s the perfect song to blast full volume in your bedroom when you’re feeling like the whole world is against you and no one understands you, which after all, is the quintessential teenage experience. 

Seriously, the lyrics feel like they were stolen from the journal I kept in high school when I was at my lowest in terms of self-confidence and identity: “I’m not cool / and I’m not smart / and I can’t even parallel park” (which especially resonated with me because even after having my driver’s license of four years, I can’t parallel park either). It’s that detail-specific writing that gained Swift her following as much as it will earn Rodrigo hers. 

Listening to Rodrigo’s ravings that are as authentic as they are relatable (helped by the raw reverb beneath her vocals to make the recording sound live), it’s haunting but reassuring how little the adolescent experience has changed. 

Still, there are some aspects of teenage-hood that only people my age and younger can identify with. 

Because if “brutal” speaks to a universal adolescent experience, “jealousy, jealousy” is an anthem for people who’ve grown up their whole life with and on the Internet. 

With a similar feel to “good 4 u”, Rodrigo rages against the dark side of social media, filters, and photo editing that pressure young people, especially women, to conform to certain standards of beauty in order to be desirable: “‘Cause all I see are girls too good to be true / With paper white teeth and perfect bodies”. It’s not other women she’s taking down, but the patriarchal idea that she should be conforming to such damaging expectations. 

During the bridge where Rodrigo shout-sings about the oddity that is feeling jealous over a stranger online (“I wanna be you so bad / And I don't even know you”), the backing piano deliberately stumbles just enough outside the key that it strips back the polished, professional quality and makes the production feel live like she’s so in the moment that mistakes are secondary to authenticity. In an instant, her message is that much clearer — imperfection is the new standard of beauty. 

SOUR closes with “hope ur okay”, a soft guitar ballad where Rodrigo reflects and mourns for childhood friends she knew led traumatic lives but lost contact with over the years. For me, it was the best kind of misdirect, because upon seeing the tracklist a few weeks ago, I originally thought it was going to be a song of well-wishes to her ex so she could bring the album to a satisfying conclusion or full-circle moment. 

Instead, she brings to life the memories of past friendships with all the detail-specific storytelling grace of Swift’s “no body, no crime” (2020) or Conan Gray’s “The Story” (2020). She touches upon abuse (“His parents cared more about the Bible / Than being good to their own child”), sexuality (“Her parents hated who shе loved…Does she know how proud I am she was created?”), and identity (“She was tired, ’cause she was brought into a world / Where family was merely blood”), all with incredible maturity, almost motherly tone. 

Again, the bridge, with all its vocal stacking to make Rodrigo sound like a dozen-membered church chorus, never feels quite long enough. It crescendos with my favorite line “Address my letters / to the holes in my butterfly wings”, then falls back into the touching close to an album that has thus far been occupied with hearts being broken in other ways, flipping the story she originally set out to write for herself. 

These are the stand-outs for me but Rodrigo has made it impossible to skip anything on the tracklist just shy of eleven songs. “traitor” poignantly captures feeling betrayed by a lover, “1 step forward, 3 steps back” is the perfect love letter to Swift in its interpolation of “New Year’s Day” (2010) and reference to her lucky number 13, and “enough for you” aptly captures all the insecurities I’ve felt while in the romantic realm — all with quiet but honest urgency and surprising maturity. Every song is gorgeous and offers something new. 

Secretly, I’m jealous of the Gen Z teens who get to rock to this in their bedroom or listen to it during class. But the brilliant thing about SOUR, from its lyrics to its aesthetics to its production, is that it ends with both Rodrigo and the listener, no matter how old, on the cusp of adolescence, wary but ready to jump into adulthood.