Olivia Rodrigo review, Sour: Disarming honesty makes for an impressive debut

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “It just ballooned into this monster … unlike anything anyone’s seen before,” Jeremy Erlich, co-head of music at Spotify, told The New York Times. Against the slo-mo, snow-crunch beat of “traitor”, Rodrigo describes being gaslit and nails a tidy chorus: “It took you two weeks to go off and date her/ Guess you didn’t cheat, but you’re still a traitor.” Then there’s the piano-backed “drivers license” that narrates her driving through suburbia while contemplating her ex, who’s “probably with that blonde girl/ Who always made me doubt/ She’s so much older than me/ She’s everything I'm insecure about…” Her hurt, fluttering vocal is whispered right into the listener’s ear until she lets rip with the sudden squall of the chorus line: “Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me.” Against the pretty chimes and sweet singing of “deja vu”, Rodrigo rolls her eyes at a guy pulling the same old moves on his new girlfriend: “So when you gonna tell her that we did that, too?/ She thinks it's special, but it’s all reused.” And by “good 4 u”, the anger is no longer served cold. “jealousy, jealousy” is driven by a pacing bass groove as the singer sighs: “I think I think too much about kids who don’t know me/ I’m so sick of myself…” At times, it feels as though the polite, considered Rodrigo could push ideas, emotions and melodies a little further than she does. Twenty years ago, dumped teenage girls could bawl along with Alanis Morissette as she howled: “Every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope you feel it”.