Olivia Rodrigo turns romance into a beautiful illness on you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love

Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is not an indie release in the small-label sense, but it absolutely belongs in the alternative-pop conversation this weekend. The album turns romance into a full-body condition: ecstatic, obsessive, insecure, funny and eventually bruising. Rodrigo has moved beyond the all-caps teenage fury of SOUR and GUTS into something more theatrical and 80s-coloured, pulling from new wave, college rock, post-punk texture and big pop melodrama without sounding like she is just trying on vintage clothes. The headline moment is the Robert Smith feature on What’s Wrong With Me, but the deeper story is Rodrigo’s development as a writer. She still knows how to make feelings feel enormous, but now she is also more precise about the strange little symptoms love leaves behind. It is pop, yes, but with enough guitar-shaped anxiety to interest indie readers too.

Source: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/olivia-rodrigo-you-seem-pretty-sad-for-a-girl-so-in-love/