For Proust, love was mutual torture, for Bukowski it was something stranger than a burning lawn, for Olivia Rodrigo it's a fucking embarrassment. Yet in Drop Dead she lets herself go and regardless of poets, philosophers and lessons taught by the greats of the past she is ready to risk everything while hope and possibility shine on a magical night. The song is a dopamine rush in which with each verse the euphoria resulting from falling in love grows: “Kiss me and I could die instantly”. She's probably the most carefree Rodrigo I've ever heard. He had put in Sour And Guts punk-pop energy, teenage angst, hymns to generational angst. She could have filled the third album with happy love songs, but she is too intelligent, she is too aware and above all she is too good an author to limit herself to the rose-tinted story of a new relationship.
Already the title You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love made it clear that it wasn't going to be a simple love album. It's a roller coaster journey of relationships that overturns clichés and expectations. The clues are inside Drop Deadthe first song on the album and the one chosen as the launch single: the quote from Just Like Heaven of the Cure, the guitars wrapped in a sort of dreamy mist and that retro taste that Rodrigo and the producer and co-author Dan Nigro use to evoke the deities of new wave and in particular Robert Smith. It is the piece that prepares the ground for a story of the various phases of a relationship: falling in love, the first conflicts, farewell. The result is Rodrigo's most complete and adventurous album from a musical point of view.
The first songs trying to explain what it feels like to fall in love. Rodrigo said the album is about the first adult relationship she had and many fans think it was the one with actor Louis Partridge, who she dated for over a year. The euphoria is still intact in Stupid Songwhich starts out as a romantic ballad and then becomes an '80s thing. Honeybee it slows down the pace and lowers the tension, but it is a tender and profound moment. It's at that point that the restlessness begins to emerge. And if there's one thing that Rodrigo knows how to do well, it's talking about his insecurities with irony and sincerity. Maggots for Brains it's a melancholy synth-based party that photographs desire and emotional dependence on a distant person: “It all seems moldy like fruit in the fridge / And I'd like to tell him what's funny about it.” Song after song the relationship breaks down more and more in a sequence of pieces designed to make a slow descent towards the end of the story.
In U + Me = <3 the singer is still stubbornly optimistic, in My Way she even becomes possessive. The breaking point coincides with the splendid Purplewhen she understands that love risks making her lose her way. In The Cure And Begged he delves into his inner world and when it seems like he needs further emotional clarification it arrives What's Wrong With Me with Robert Smith. It's the perfect collaboration: the presence of the Cure singer hovers throughout the album, in the references in the lyrics and in the production, and here it finally takes shape and life. “You're what's wrong with me,” the two sing, a phrase that fits perfectly into both the Cure and Rodrigo's repertoire.
The singer has never made a secret of her influences. In the past he has drawn on 90s rock and riot grrrls like Hole and Babes in Toyland. Here he does something different: he doesn't just pay homage to the models, but builds a soundscape that contains them. Those looking for the pop-punk of previous records may need a little more time to get in tune with the new sound, but Smith's presence proves that the direction he's moving in is the right one, with the electro-pop energy of Expectationswhich seems to sprout from a seed planted by the B-52's, which adds further nuance and keeps the attention.
One of the album's merits is Rodrigo's maturity as a narrator. The girl who conquered the world at 17 by singing about adolescent pain in Drivers License he seems to have developed a new awareness: you can love someone more than anything else in the world and still let them go. There is no shortage of phrases that hit the stomach, like when in Less he sings, “If loving me means letting me go and wishing me the best, then I wish, I wish, I wish you would love me a little less.”
Arrived at the closing piece Cigarette Smoke the protagonist comes to find a sort of peace, even if there is no real resolution. Just try to move forward. “Memories become dark,” he repeats several times. Perhaps they will fade over time. The songs, however, remain.
From Rolling Stone US.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
