PicoBlog

Can’t catch her now

In honor of Black Friday’s RSD-only release Guts: The Secret Tracks, which has remained impressively hard to find on Soulseek in 320k (😬) — and what’s bound to be a sweep in the coming weeks of year-end 2023 lists that cover pop at all — here’s a definitive ranking of every Olivia Rodrigo song that doesn’t predate her singing the word “fuck.” I’m sure some of the High School Musical material bangs but I don’t have enough paid subscribers to justify more than 29 grafs on this (give or take some one-liners), especially during year-end season whereupon I will die. And no I’m not honoring her all-lowercase/all-caps shit; I’m crazy for her but not that crazy. It’s brutal out there.

[Last updated 3/27/2024 after the release of Guts (Spilled), a frustrating but ultimately rewarding addendum to one of 2023’s best albums.]

29. “The Grudge”

Look, one has to be last. And while it sure beats both the extended Tool jam and the SMG thriller, I prefer my own use of “Hurt people hurt people.”

28. “Logical”

The main reason I prefer “Logical” to “The Grudge” in the race to figure out which one is the ultimate One Ballad Too Many in an oeuvre trimmer than her waist is because I remember how it goes. But don’t claim you find the 2+2=5 conceit too basic unless you’re gonna dress Radiohead down for the same thing the year she was born.

27. “Teenage Dream”

I prefer “Logical” as a tune — my least favorite Olivia thing is how much she sounds like Lorde when a bunch of her high-register selves are multitracked into an army of waives. But even though 20 is, uh, a bit early to be worrying if she peaked (“I fear that they already got all the best parts of me”), that’s really not this Disney refugee and professional smart cookie’s fault. When does she stop being wise beyond her years and just start being wise? I’d clock it at somewhere in 2021.

26. “Jealousy, Jealousy”

Like many of the album’s songs, “Jealousy, Jealousy” has a mirror on Guts, the more expansive “Pretty Isn’t Pretty,” which names names rather than snipping into the void. It even flirts with anonymity; the distorted megaphone rapping on the bridge could be Remi Wolf. A nice bluesy-funky change of pace on Sour but not a ton more. 

25. “1 Step Forward, 2 Steps Back”

Look, I don’t care that she took out two loans from the hedge fund of Antonoff & Swift to start building her empire. Even her simplest tune from Sour absolutely annihilates whatever samey-ass Reputation track she built it from. Swift may be getting more and more popular  — “Cruel Summer” only just hit number-one a couple years after “Deja Vu” breathed new life into it — but Olivia makes pop even more pop.

24. “All-American Bitch”

Guts’ gutsy opener and its marriage of Swifty posing and Avril guitars has grown on me for sure but it still won’t make me believe she can play a “bitch” even for fun. She’s too kind, which she mentions, but all this “pretty when I cry” stuff makes me afraid she’ll start trading her Bikini Kill vinyl for My Chemical Romance. I love Guts, I promise. But the “light as a feather”/”stiff as a board” thing she maybe didn’t hear Liz Phair do first because she was too busy being made underscores my biggest problem with her sophomore bow: many of the quotable lines feel a bit pat, or secondhand, or both. This one feels like a secondhand persona even. Her least convincing song, though the SNL performance ate.

23. “Happier”

One reason it’s so hard to rank these is because some of the most dynamite lines turn some of her relatively weaker compositions into setpieces. The narcotic Broadway swell of “Happier” sticks her halfway between Billie Eilish’s “Wish You Were Gay” and a self-knowledge Taylor Swift has mostly stopping searching for in her quest for empowerment. But capturing the contradictions distinguishing desire from love in showstoppers like “I hope you’re happy / But not like you were with me” and “I hope you’re happy but don’t be happier” were more than just dry runs for the love-you-hate-you she perfected on “Get Him Back!”

22. “Stranger”

The least musically distinguished tune on her most guitar-oriented release still hits harder than any (Taylor Version) rarity you’ve ever heard that’s shorter than ten minutes. Too bad our quality-control queen couldn’t release a stopgap in good conscience betwixt Sour and Guts; “I can’t even remember what made me lose all this sleep” is a true epilogue to her breakup cycle that sets up her freedom album perfectly. Hook’s been said before, but never as terse: “You’re just a stranger I know everything about.”

3/27/2024 update: Of all the “secret” songs revamped for Guts (Spilled), this is the one that most benefits, sounds comparable and maybe a little fuller.

21. “Hope Ur Ok”

We approve of so many drumless, slow Rodrigo songs because so many of them are jawdroppers. Taking a cue from the filtered strum of Frank Ocean’s Blonde, Rodrigo drops the subtlest LGBTQ+ anthem in teenpop history: “Does she know how proud I am she was created / With the courage to unlearn all of their hatred?” How does it fit into an 18-year-old’s breakup opus? Maybe by redistributing her love for traitor ex towards the people she’s known who need it most. Healthy, inspiring, empathetic — just the foundation to build her more fun songs on.

20. “Lacy”

Critics trash this one because both the writing (“skin like puff pastry” sounds cracked and dry; I’d know) and musical shape tend a bit arty. I say they’re subconsciously worried Rodrigo is going to commission Aaron Dessner for her own Folklore, and they’d deserve it. At least three lesser ballads on Guts prove pretty isn’t pretty enough but this is.

19. “Scared of My Guitar”

As if. No bona fide pop star has heard so much dynamic emotional possibility in the instrument since, what, Kelly Clarkson? “My friends know the truth is I’m not as all right as I claim” — it’s not that I think pop stars are better off keeping their emotions in check, it’s that too many pop stars take, how should I say, irresponsible stewardship of the concept of feeling in general. If she slips down the charts sooner than ideal because “Get Him Back!” and “Bad Idea Right?” keep their cool by sticking to fantasy and celebrating unwisdom respectively rather than threatening anything dangerous, she’s still better off selling sanity than, well, records. Rich people either get richer or more conscientious, not both. So if the premise is that the guitar is an emotional polygraph she can’t pass, well, my only complaint is that she couldn’t tie the “stringing you along” bit into the metaphor.

3/27/2024 update: The more measured Guts (Spilled) re-recording of this song doesn’t do it justice. Please Soulseek the more spontaneous, live-sounding original.

18. “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”

The rockingest song on Guts purportedly references both Mean Girls and, according to the author, “Ballad of a Thin Man.” Breakdown briefly threatens to do that hardcore thing where the chorus comes back evil and lurching in half-time. That triangulates her if anything does.

17. “Favorite Crime”

Proof that she could inject a ton of life into goth-folk if she wanted…

16. “Can’t Catch Me Now”

…which Rodrigo secretly improved on in 2023 even more remarkably than her rock’n’roll. This intense, uh, ballad from The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (gosh) wouldn’t have fit on Guts even though there’d be plenty of room left on the compact disc after you append the four Secret Tracks. I mean, what would a celestially harmonized Shakira-meets-Civil Wars tango-dirge fit on? Stay for the strings.

15. “Making the Bed”

It wasn’t until I started zeroing in to make this list that I realized Guts continued after “Brutal” in more than one way. Riffs, duh. But Sour sandwiched an entire out-of-love narrative between “if someone tells me one more time ‘enjoy your youth’ I’m gonna cry” and its outward-looking closer. Second album is so fun it doesn’t easily register as preoccupied with time and age. But it’s as clockeyed as Modern Vampires of the City. Taylor Swift still has two weeks to write a “33” as sharp as her “22,” but for now it’s Rodrigo who continues to mine gold from “another day of pretending I’m older than I am” or threatening to act, you know, 20, when the mood strikes. The stairstep chorus neatly stacks each and every one of her angsts (“counting all the beautiful things I regret”) before she pulls the sheets over her head. Thankfully, it was all a dream. Psych.

14. “Girl I’ve Always Been”

If Guts: The Secret Tracks proves anything, it’s that she’d torch three generations of folkies just like she does pop stars. So if this strummy novelty sounds primed for domination on open mic night at Central Perk, well, the title rhymes with not just “candle in the wind” and “can’t say I’m a perfect ten” but also “I get down with crooked men,” a wickeder sentiment than anything in “All-American Bitch.” Set Nellie McKay loose on it.

3/27/2024 update: The Guts (Spilled) re-recording of this song suffers more than any of the other remakes for its strangely stilted, Joni-ish new arrangement (congas!). I prefer the more off-the-cuff “Smelly Cat” strum of the original; Soulseek is your friend.

13. “Pretty Isn’t Pretty”

Gut-wrenching. I don’t have data on how seriously her target demo is taking this one but it’s well-documented that the rich, famous, young, and pretty can’t make themselves suffer any less internally than the people who feel it’s their prerogative to skip birthday cake and don’t share those traits. It’s clever to invert the Psychedelic Furs-style music into something markedly more tormented than “Pretty in Pink,” and even cleverer to achieve that chorus with the high notes in her arsenal in tandem with the ascendant synth-strings.

12. “Traitor”

Four surefire chords. Fragile, but carefully inset rhymes: “It took you two weeks to go off and date her / Guess you didn’t cheat, but you’re still a traitor” wins the battle if not the boy. And who wants him anyway? Just after Sour wasted no time reinventing rock for Xannials, it quickly followed “Brutal” with a new generation’s archetype for a power ballad scorned: “Remember I brought her up and you told me I was paranoid?” “Traitor” is the Olivia tune most adaptable to anyone else — bet Miley or Gaga could slam-dunk it. But rather than having the effect of making her sound anonymous, it establishes her in a tradition of classic.

11. “Bad Idea Right?”

Not just sprechgesang, downright rapping. And fuzz bass. Or fizz bass, since it’s power-pop. Her most daring single I’d say, with an edge over “Get Him Back!” because there’s more precedent for novelty pop-rap scoring big in the TikTok era (or the “Tik Tok” era) than whatever zippery guitar effects including palm-muting and basic crunch this thing is trying to resuscitate. Guts revels in playing dumb after playing the network TV and respectability game long enough to earn creative control, and sometimes that includes her take-you-home-and-make-you-like-it enunciation of can’t-two-peo-ple-re-con-nect.  Smart: The pregnant pause before “but I can’t.”

10. “Deja Vu”

The spaciest of Sour’s three megahits (well actually: token flop “Brutal” went to number 12 and “Traitor” made the top ten, so five I guess) is a fan pick sophisticated enough to edge ‘til nearly 90 seconds in before dropping drums. It’s probably my least favorite — nice catch when she imagines how annoying the ex is singing along with Glee but she forgets to for Billy Joel — and always a surprise how much I love it anyway. Other than the musically more wanting “Happier,” “Deja Vu” is the ultimate encapsulation of Sour’s great subject: Worrying that the most meaningful love of your short life is just another rerun for the other person. And how could anyone resist our reigning songwriter’s “Now I bet you even tell her how you love her / In between the chorus and the verse”? No wonder she treasures Billy Joel.

9. “Enough for You”

Almost exactly the same tune as “Logical,” only the words are a knockout and the vocal performance very maybe her best ever. She wishes she was smart, interesting, and pretty enough for him before cutting bait and just wanting herself back. Every girl, boy, and nonbinary high-schooler who hears “Someday I’ll be everything to somebody else” will be better for it. And if it ends on a kind of sullen note (“no, nothing’s enough for you”) well, she was in high school, too.

8. “Obsessed”

St. Vincent’s penance for Sleater-Kinney’s worst-ever album is one of Olivia’s best-ever songs. Not only that, it sounds like “Toxic”-era Britney huffing fumes in Steve Albini’s garage; those cymbals really crash and splash. I complain that she’s too well-adjusted to even stoop to playing the “All-American Bitch,” but this one really indulges her id, doesn’t clean up the fuzzbox’s mess (or the Blue Box for that matter), really fits in with the Third Man Records roster. In the great tradition of Lee Ann Womack’s “I’ll Think of a Reason Later,” it even laments that her ex’s new Her is “good with kids.” It also really sounds like a hit, just maybe not in this timeline. 

7. “Get Him Back!”

Marky got with Sharon and Sharon got Cherese, she was sharing Sharon's outlook on the topic of disease. Mikey had a facial scar and Bobby was a racist, they were all in love with dying, they were doing it in Texas.

6. “So American”

Everything you want from a bonus track: a miracle improves the album proper and as a bonus is faster and (maybe) rocks harder than anything on it. In fact, it’s faster than anything Paramore ever did in their pop-punk days either, which is why they don’t get a songwriting credit and also why it won’t follow “Good 4 U” to the top of the Hot 100. So what’s this thrashing new-waver about? “He says I’m pretty wearing his clothes,” “He laughs at all my jokes,” “Oh god, I’m gonna marry him if he keeps this shit up.” Euphoric motherfucking new-crush bliss. Enjoy it while it lasts, because it won’t — not at this speed anyway. And may god have mercy on our souls if it’s about Taylor’s ex.

5. “Love Is Embarrassing”

As I keep saying, at first and on some days, Guts was and is a little too archetypal. Sour’s focus on the ex kept her personal even when her feelings could be any (popular) 18-year-old’s, and pop music is the megaphone that transmits the personal to the universe, thereby commencing universal. So let’s compare Guts to Kendrick Lamar’s famously Pulitzer-winning Damn., another four-letter follow-up whose titles (“Feel,” “Love,” “God”) also struggled to reach me in their broadening scope while making me begrudgingly admit later they smoked. Not wanting to repeat my mistakes (something Olivia knows about all too well), I let her Veronicas-indebted pick hit wash over me in its mechanized pump and concluded a bit late that it’s her greatest deep cut. She curls the syllables in “some weird second-string loser who’s not worth mentioning” around her finger like a shiny new rock, not that she needs one anytime soon that she can’t already buy herself.

4. “Good 4 U”

It’s the first rock song (by my lights, anyway — fun.’s “We Are Young” not so much) to hit number one on the Hot 100 since, ha, Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You.” And (unfairly, thanks again “Blurred Lines”) Paramore get writing credits on it because it allegedly has something in common with “Misery Business” beyond a woman singing a minor-key rock song. And fine, I guess they share a vengeful air that’s always exciting in pop. But beyond calling him a sociopath, this is Rodrigo at her most torn-up, crying in the bathroom all night; rarely has the phrase “happy and healthy” been weaponized to such withering effect. It’s the genuine riffage and propulsion (seriously, Offspring-grade stuff at least) that bend the whole thing into a truly DGAF sarcasterpiece, except we wouldn’t care as much if Rodrigo didn’t. She wishes she didn’t, and you can feel her soul burning at both ends on this one. I’m predisposed to love it and so are you.

3. “Drivers License”

Her teengirl repetitions take on hypnotic dimensions when you link the Olivia of 2021 to the Olivia of 2023 — by “Get Him Back!” she’s no longer driving past his house alone because she’s more concerned with “all the faces of my disappointed friends.” So that’s growth! But the original starting point remains so soulful, so sweeping, so worthy of every drunken singalong and SNL spoof, and pretty damn mature in its own right. With one “I still fucking love you” she swiftly broke clean with Disney and amazingly, her signature song remains the longest on either of her official studio albums. Bulletproof songwriting doesn’t grant just anyone the power to do anything. But with a star this fresh and brilliant? Her very first song was a blank check she’s still earning goodwill returns on.

2. “Vampire”

I admit: if it weren’t for “fame fucker,” this would probably be in the top spot. “Vampire” has just about everything that makes Ms. Rodrigo great; it’s almost as if she and Dan Nigro sat down and tried to Frankenstein “Drivers License” and “Good 4 U” together into the perfect monster, and it’s a blockbuster sequel in every sense. With the occasional exception of Lady Gaga, pop stars don’t make even a diet version of this kind of epic anymore. Like maybe an occasional stitched-together event like “Sicko Mode” but this brings to mind Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman dramatizing at warp speed. It’s also one of her most memorable melodies and full of sick burns and solidarity (“god I hate the way I called them crazy too”); the rumor that it’s about T***** S**** only throws gas on the fire. Otherwise it’s got all the usual fixings on a shiny new quasi-disco build. And “fame fucker,” which I just wish scanned on the page as well as it does as spittle from the mouth of a 20-year-old. Luckily, songwriting is about sound.

1. “Brutal”

I know these stats are only interesting to me, and that 2:25 and 4:02 are hardly “extreme” but I love that Olivia’s shortest and longest readily available songs are her best of the best. An artist who gets better as they push their limits is a great artist. (“Girl I’ve Always Been” is shorter and “Scared of My Guitar” is longer, and both are just as juicy for the kinds of psychos — me — who notice and care.) “Brutal” is audacious, compact, a whirlwind that actually resembles the brain of a sudden adult, down to the swirling orchestral daydream that cracks it open. Don’t tell her “enjoy your youth.” Don’t ask her to parallel park. Don’t tell her she owes yet another established monolith a piece of her publishing by biting a chunk of Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up” riff. She wants it to be, like, messy. “Where’s my fucking teenage dream” and “I hate the way I’m perceived” and “I love people I don’t like” and literally all of it are as rock as rock gets, not to mention as teen as anything gets. Anointing the voice of a generation is a #badidearight? So let’s just say we’d appreciate hearing more from her than anyone else in music or life until she finally stoops to a Christmas album. And “Brutal” kind of established from day one that she may not.

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