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Jun 15, 2026 Web Exclusive By Caleb Campbell

Olivia Rodrigo has built her career on telling love stories in miniature, chronicling teenage heartbreak with a preternatural clarity and emotional heft. There is already a budding generation who have had their first break-ups soundtracked by “driver’s license” and “vampire.” As a result, you’d be forgiven for assuming that “drop dead,” the opening track and lead single from Rodrigo’s third album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, would be another pop-punk kiss-off to another stupid guy. Instead, it is the deliriously giddy first chapter of an album-length love story.

The record unfolds in a single narrative arc following the rise and fall of a relationship. It begins with a limerence-laden first meeting and honeymoon phase, continues through an obsessive streak where the cracks in the love affair start to show, dips into despondent anticipatory grieving, and ends in the emotional wreckage after the breakup. Rodrigo has covered a lot of this territory before on SOUR and GUTS, but never with this cohesive or cutting a throughline.

After years of so many of pop’s A-list dropping massive, streaming-friendly statement albums, Rodrigo’s latest effort feels refreshingly curated. More than any of her contemporaries, Rodrigo has a love for the album format and its potential for storytelling. The album rises and falls in careful sequence. She breaks up the album’s initial endorphin rush with a glimmering ballad and largely pivots away from the candy-coated pop at the album’s mid-point. Curdling lyrical sentiments and newfound epiphanies steadily leak in, leading to a lower energy Side B that she then elevates with a penultimate New Wave banger and one final emotional blood-letting.

Every Olivia Rodrigo album has felt like a tour through what music she has been into lately. SOUR was fired-up 2000s pop punk and GUTS was ’90s alt rock. Her latest fixture seems to be the hippest touchstones of the ’80s一college rock, post punk, New Wave, and The Cure. After inviting Robert Smith onstage with her at Glastonbury last year, Rodrigo name drops “Just Like Heaven” within the first minute of the album. She also brings in Smith for a prime duet spot on “what’s wrong with me” and the album’s pivotal highlight shares a name with his band. Her love for Smith’s music isn’t the only playful easter egg on the album either. The sickly sweet nickname she bestows her love on “honeybee” returns with a biting edge on the closer, “cigarette smoke.”

Throughout the album, Rodrigo and producer Dan Nigro pile on the synths and incredibly detailed harmonies, effectively fusing recognizably ’80s touches into Rodrigo’s world. Early in the album, “maggots for brains” toys with a drum machine and guitar combo that would fit perfectly on New Order’s Power Corruption and Lies, while the guitars on “u + me = <3” feel like The Cure at their most jangly and pop. Later, “the cure”ーthe actual songーbriefly shifts the sound palette forward a few years, bringing out churning guitar strums and swelling orchestral touches that recall Mellon Collie-era Smashing Pumpkins. “My way” and “expectations” are both neon-soaked New Wave, with the latter track’s pulsing synth, handclaps, and unexpected robo-vocals making for an utterly catchy throwback to some of the era’s silliest impulses.

Yet, for all that Rodrigo pushes in new directions, it all remains very recognizably her own. On “my way” she pulls out the teasing talk-sung vocals and instrumentation that stops on the word “stop” that she used to such great effect on “bad idea right?” Elsewhere, “stupid song” begins as a very classically Rodrigo piano ballad before galloping into a surging synth-laden rocker. She also loads the albums with her usual fair share of true ballads. While these have sometimes been a low point on previous records, “begged” and “less” are both truly pristine beauties and with how important each track is to the arc of the album, it would be a struggle to choose any that shouldn’t have made the cut.

Throughout, Rodrigo and her collaborators have a tight grasp over how to capture the feelings she is trying to communicate in song. The soft-focus synths that introduce the album on “drop dead” perfectly capture that instant head-over-heels feeling, while the sprightly talk-sung verses and massive harmony-stacked chorus pull you into the track like a rom com meet-cute. The lyrics on “drop dead” and “stupid song” are so completely in love that it isn’t hard to see that the sentiments are too good to be true. Already Rodrigo is comparing herself to a speeding car, a melting candle, and an unraveling thread, sounding increasingly desperate to pull herself deeper into the relationship. Yet, when you’re swept along by pounding keys, soaring guitars, and immaculate pop hooks, it is easy not to care.

Cracked and curdling desperation quickly becomes the defining tenor of the record’s first half. After the lovestruck piano ballad, “honeybee,” “maggots for brains” shows Rodrigo in a codependent mode, unable to even function without her love, while “my way” finds her tearing into someone who has gotten a little too familiar with her boy. Finally, she settles completely into life with her partner, melding their lives together on “purple,” only to find that she’s losing her own identity: “Melt with you ‘til it all turns black / Are we so in love? Are we too attached? / Melt with you ‘til it all turns black / When you smooth it out, but it feels too flat.”

From there, “the cure” delivers the album’s central revelation as Rodrigo finally recognizes that pouring all of herself into this relationship was never going to fix her problems. She wrestles with being taken for granted on “begged,” admits to herself that things aren’t going to get better on “what’s wrong with me,” and everything finally falls apart on “less.” After celebrating her newfound independence and self-respect with “expectations,” “cigarette smoke” offers a bitter denouement that finds Rodrigo lonely and wishing the lingering memories would fade.

It is a dour ending to Rodrigo’s love story, but not a very surprising one. So many “perfect relationships” end after you get everything you ever wanted and realize it was ultimately an idealized fantasyーthat no matter how love feels, it isn’t the cure. Yet, even if her story isn’t particularly novel, the diaristic and mature telling makes the album hit deeply. Rodrigo unfurls her own restlessness and unhealthy impulses, leaving even the record’s happiest moments feeling raw and exposed on repeat listens. If you let her, she will strip away the cynicism of age, transport you back to your younger years, and take you on the rollercoaster of your first real heartbreak again. Rodrigo’s songwriting is all about emotional transferrence, and she does some of her best work here. (www.oliviarodrigo.com)

Author rating: 8.5/10