Olivia Rodrigo released her sophomore album “Guts” on Sep. 8, 2023. She has knocked it out of the park, exceeding many expectations, bypassing her debut album “Sour” on the charts with her first debuting at 295,000 units and “Guts” debuting at 302,000 units.
Rodrigo bypassed the typical sophomore slump with all songs on “Guts” in the top 40 of Billboard’s Hot 100. In “Sour,” she had a few songs that leaned into the rock genre, but “Guts” really leans into the genre. She also includes a few piano ballads, like “Lacy,” “Making the Bed,” “Logical,” “The Grudge,” and “Teenage Dream.”
This album focuses on Rodrigo’s life being 19 and the challenges that come with it. She talks about a year “filled with lots of confusion, mistakes, awkwardness, and good old fashioned teen angst.”
“Sour” begins with Rodrigo asking where her teenage dream was, and “Guts” ends with her saying “I’m sorry I couldn’t always be your teenage dream.” This album starts off with her declaring that she’s got the sun in her pocket with a pop-rock song talking about how you can never be so grateful all the time and how that causes a lot of repressed feelings.
“Bad Idea Right!” started as a joke song but then Rodrigo and Dan Nigro, her producer, realized that they were onto something while writing it. Rodrigo said, “In one of the choruses there’s a part that sounds like an instrument in the background, but it’s me gradually screaming louder and louder.” This song is upbeat and fun and it just makes you want to get up and dance.
“Lacy” was originally a poem Rodrigo had written for her college poetry class. “I took a poetry class, so that was really fun. We actually turned one of the songs that I wrote in the poetry class- the poem was called ‘Lacy,’ we turned it into a song on the album called ‘Lacy,’ so it was quite fruitful.” “Lacy” is one of the many piano ballads on this album. It’s also the first song on the album that mainly uses piano.
Rodrigo told “Interview Magazine” that “Making the Bed” was the hardest song to write on the album. She says that she wrote about how her life has changed because of the success of the last album and how crazy that has been for her. It tells you about her dwindling satisfaction with her career and her fame. In the end, she concludes that she only has herself to blame.
“Get Him Back” is the first song not previously released that ended up in the top spot on the Hot 100 list. It debuted at #11 on the list. Rodrigo has said that this is her favorite song on the album. She said that it was fun to write and it’s something that she wants the crowd to sing.
The album ends with “Teenage Dream” which is about growing up around and being under the spotlight. It shows the pressure that musicians have to constantly make their new work better than their last. It tells about the anxieties and challenges that come with growing up.
Rodrigo has proved that she is able to exceed so many expectations with this new album. She exceeded the success of her debut album and experimented with a new overall style or genre. Based on how successful her first two albums have been, you can tell that she will succeed in the music industry.
