Just a Girl Crying Over Olivia Rodrigo's New Album, "You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl so in Love"

Olivia Rodrigo—modern pop/rock icon and future music legend—just released her third official album titled “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl so in Love.” The album dropped last Friday at midnight, and the girls have been recovering ever since.

I was anticipating Olivia Rodrigo’s new album while coming out of a long-term relationship and dealing with several life changes that have evoked feelings of instability, a lack of control, and, honestly, plenty of self-doubt. The announcement of this album had me in a state of impatience, especially following a delay as the album was originally intended to come out in February. However, after listening all the way through, I am grateful Olivia took the time to pour her present feelings into this project.

I’ve taken this album in as it’s been presented to me, meaning I listened to “drop dead” first, her initial single, then I watched her live performance of “begged” just before “the cure” was released, her second single. Lastly, before the album officially dropped, I watched her live performance of “what’s wrong with me” featuring an artist from one of my favorite bands of all time, Robert Smith from The Cure.

Despite her order of released songs, the album is actually meant to be listened to in the way she’s listed it, starting with “drop dead” and ending with “cigarette smoke.” What makes this album stand out compared to her previous releases is her artistic storytelling approach.

drop dead

“Drop dead” is the first song I listened to on the album, and it is clearly a love song that’s too good to be true. Before her announced breakup with British actor Louis Partridge and the album’s delay, fans speculated that there would be more healthy love songs on the record. With the queen of breakup songs in a long-term, seemingly happy relationship, her fans expected an epic love story with themes of joy, fulfillment, and hope within a secure, healthy relationship.

When I think of this song, I think of every relationship I’ve been in where the highs are really high, but the lows are very low. “Drop dead” is like a burst of energy between the upbeat score and the dream-like subject she’s experiencing all of these exciting moments with. I believe she put this song out first, not just because it’s the first song on the album, but almost to set her listeners up for something romanticized and, like previously stated, “too good to be true.”

This song also alludes to the fact that Olivia has thrown so much of herself into this relationship with this over-romanticization of love and being loved, causing the song to feel all-consuming. From stalking a boy on the internet, manifesting their coupling, and then finally being with them and feeling high on life, the red flags were there all along. As a single, it reads as a passionate love song. Within the context of the album, it almost foreshadows the relationship’s downfall.

stupid song

“Stupid song” is the next love song, and continues this theme of falling “too fast” or “too hard.” This is one of my two favorite songs on the album, as it is phenomenally written. These days, it’s so difficult to find a song that includes well-placed figurative language. Her metaphors in the chorus paint a picture that she’s gotten too ahead of herself. Despite that, this song is full of passion and yearning for her partner, putting him above any other love she's experienced by saying, "I want you more than any stupid song could ever say," and "nobody's wanted somebody more."

This song alludes to the breakup through its melancholic tone, while her use of imagery creates this beautiful, almost tragic love confession from a girl who has no idea how to stay true to herself. The yearning, the crescendo in the chorus, the mix of love and despair in the lyrics make this song one of the best on the album.

honeybee

Nothing beats the melancholic feeling I get from “honeybee.” I wanted to start by asking my readers: did you also feel like a child in your crib listening to an angel singing a lullaby when you first listened to this song? The lilt of her voice, how she slides effortlessly along the notes, and the way she uses your senses against you set you on this path of mixed feelings. The line in her second verse, “Man, it feels like God threw me a bone,” tells me everything I need to know about HOW this kind of dream-like love she’s always hoped for turned sour.

Oftentimes, we feel we are not deserving of love, no matter how much we want it, and when a good love comes to us, it feels like some dream we might wake up from at any moment. “Honeybee” almost battles avoidant and anxious attachment styles. The line, “but even when I’m quiet, I love you, baby, I promise,” is followed by the fear of him leaving her, suggesting there might’ve been a problem with her expressing her feelings. Then, in her line, “In the dark, I’m not scared, I just reach, and you’re right there,” followed by the line of “shooting stars, racing cars, everything I own just feels like ours,” hints at anxious attachment with her inability to distinguish their lives individually because she’s not only in love with him, but is becoming increasingly emotionally reliant on him.

maggots for brains

“Maggots for brains” is when Olivia really starts to get honest. It feels like we’re peering into a diary entry as she expresses how everything in her life feels like it’s “rotting.” Again, Olivia uses metaphors to express herself artistically; she refuses to use a cut-and-dry way of writing. A significant theme in this album is how her mental state and the way she views herself is projected onto her relationship. In this case, she’s using images of zombies, molding fruit, and muted colors to express her state of mind, tying all of these feelings into the repeated chorus line, “but that’s just a thing that happens when my baby goes away.”

Now, we’re starting to see clearly how this relationship is unhealthy. From the high highs of “drop dead,” we finally see her face her low lows. Toward the end of the song, we hear her say, “what can I do but think of you when my baby goes away?” We see how this emotional reliance has grown to the point where she gets depressed whenever he’s away, off living his own individual life. She fully loses her sense of self in this song after coming off “honeybee,” a song that expresses that she feels fulfilled when they’re together. Therefore, “maggots for brains” takes the opposite perspective by expressing how much she struggles when she’s without her partner. This is what I love so much about this album: every song foreshadows the next, which only hints at her brilliant artistry.

u + me = <3

I appreciate that “u + me = <3” isn’t thrown in with the initial love songs and is placed right after “maggots for brains.” Olivia really establishes that relationships are rocky and that difficult feelings come in waves. I like the placement because it supports those emotional waves, and this song represents a more hopeful take on their love. In fact, it’s like she’s resisting negative cynicism around modern love as well as her own negative outlooks because she’s never wanted someone so badly.

There are still themes of doubt and fear, but this song shows that, despite everything, this relationship was healing for her at one point. She gave a big, “fuck it, whatever” to “cruel” modern love, and she expresses how she doesn’t want their relationship to change, even when she knows every relationship inevitably does.

my way

“My way” gives us a peek into Olivia’s female rage and jealousy. I recently watched an interview in which Olivia said she likes to write about emotions she’s uncomfortable with; ugly emotions. Jealousy and possessiveness are included in that category, and boy oh boy, is this a jealous song! Olivia has a subject that she’s conversing with throughout the song, suggesting it’s a girl who’s trying to break up her relationship. A repetitive line is “that’s it, I win,” and “you’re in my way now.”

This upbeat song takes on a 90s or early 2000s style with its techno track and catchy beat, pulling from the style of her previous album, “Guts.” I like the way the music seems to travel up and down like a game of ping-pong. This back-and-forth accurately depicts the conflict presented in the song, with petty jabs being thrown between her and the subject. Although Olivia believes she’s won, this intense jealousy suggests a deep-rooted sense of insecurity in her relationship.

purple

I apologize, but my only skippable song on this album is “purple.” I said I was going to be authentic and honest in my writing, so I will continue to admit what I don’t like about topics. I find this song a bit uninteresting, as it’s kind of a continuation of her attachment conveyed through a ballad that I don’t think fits her style as well as the other songs.

However, this song really solidifies the lack of independence growing ever-present in this relationship. Their intertwined lives are represented through the colors “red” and “blue,” creating purple. Now Olivia only sees the word in purple, losing her own color in the process. The last section of the song blatantly addresses it with multiple lines like, “melt with you 'til it all turns black, when you get so close, and you can't go back.”

the cure

“The cure” is Olivia’s thesis statement for this album, and a song I cried to for weeks leading up to its full release. This song hit really close to home, as somebody who’s ended a relationship due to emotional attachment and reliance. I cried to this song out of empathy, as I’ve seen firsthand what happens when you try to love someone before loving yourself. It’s odd to be on the other side of one of Olivia’s songs, to be the person who loved someone just like her. I’m almost always relating to Olivia’s perspective, but I truly felt the pain of the other side while listening to this.

“The cure” possesses the strongest metaphor of the album, and the music video further supports it. Olivia is searching for a cure in the person she loves, and yet she’s faced with this feeling of emptiness inside her that she can’t seem to fulfill. She describes her mental illness as this sickness she’s always trying to find a cure for, begging her partner to fix her for her. In the chorus, she finally reaches the acceptance that being loved will never be a cure for her sadness.

This song is Olivia’s favorite out of all the songs she’s written, as it takes love and transforms it into a mirror, and when she holds that mirror up to herself, she sees the parts of herself that haven’t been healed. The general theme of this song is that it’s impossible to find yourself in a relationship. NO relationship is going to fix you. Nobody is coming to save you. The only person you can try to heal is yourself. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink; that’s what Olivia is trying to convey. 

This song is so impactful with her medical imagery and metaphors, as well as her ability to look so deep inside herself that she sees she is not ready to be loved, not until she finds the love in herself first.

begged

The song “begged” is undeniably beautiful, but it is the saddest song on the album. The acoustic guitar perfectly articulates the well of sadness and despair Olivia is feeling while writing this. “Begged” shows how her fears have evolved into irrational thoughts that she projects onto her relationship. Her lines, “all that I want is to know undoubtedly that you just have eyes for me, could you make that clear?” and “what a shame you’re not here to witness my devotion and my endless well of needs,” show how she’s lost security in her relationship and needs endless reassurance to feel okay. However, this song also shows us how she might not have been treated the best either.

We often see that her partner goes away a lot throughout the album, but we don’t see their flaws in the relationship until this point. “So I'm patient, you're learning, pretend it's not hurting, oh, whoa (oh, whoa)” and “so I'm cool and forgiving, I'll take what you're giving, oh, whoa (oh, ah) but nothing's quite enough when I know that to get it, I begged” suggests Olivia had to beg her partner for more. This could represent how she feels like nothing is ever enough due to the emptiness inside her, or it could suggest that her partner did have something to do with her insecurities, and maybe wasn’t giving her the love she deserves.

what’s wrong with me

“What’s wrong with me,” by Olivia Rodrigo and music legend Robert Smith, is my favorite song on the album. I have never before listened to a song that properly articulates the feeling of being unhappy when, logically, you believe you should be content. The 80s-style ballad represents this internal conflict of being in a comfortable state of perpetual unhappiness, particularly in the confines of a romantic relationship.

I’ve cried to this song almost every day since it came out, because it’s the song I’ve related to the most. “Went to the doctor, but she said I was fine, but every movie that I see makes me cry,” accurately describes how emotional you become when you aren’t doing well. The inability to get out of bed, the physical sickness, not being able to eat or sleep, the urge to talk to a friend, it all plays a part in your body’s competence, as oftentimes your body can tell you how you feel before your brain catches up. This song also expresses how a bad relationship can ruin your mental state, as she states throughout the song, “I think you’re what’s wrong with me,” referring to her partner.

I related to this song for multiple reasons. It’s difficult not to lose yourself in a relationship, as you’re actively balancing being there for somebody else while also focusing on yourself. As an empathetic person and someone who takes responsibility for other people’s emotions, I’ve had such a hard time maintaining my sense of self while in a relationship. An emotionally reliant relationship leads to that comfortable state of unhappiness when you want to feel like yourself again, but you don’t want to leave your current situation. Olivia can point out that her relationship is worsening her mental health while also shedding light on her individual issues.

less

“Less” hit me like a freight train; it was like a sucker punch to the chest. “Less” is about Olivia’s partner breaking up with her, finally ending the rocky relationship we see evolve throughout the album. Olivia used volume to her advantage, as she crescendos into the chorus, representing her anger, heartbreak, and desperation. In this song, we see how the fears in her earlier songs come to fruition as she and her partner try to recreate their first date and are met with a feeling that their relationship isn’t right for either of them anymore.

This song also shows that the deterioration of Olivia’s mental state had contributed to their breakup, with the chorus lines, “you say you can't stand to watch me cry a minute more, so you do the noble thing and open up the door. If loving me means letting go and wishing me the best, then I guess—I wish, I wish, I wish you loved me less.”

Olivia’s partner leaves her in a final act of love and we see how she desperately wishes he didn’t love her as deeply, so that they could stay with one another. I think this song is very complicated, as someone who’s been on the other side and has let somebody go so they can focus on themselves and heal. However, despite that love, there’s going to be resentment toward the person who left the relationship first no matter what, and Olivia lets that out with a string of wishes, regrets and hopes.

expectations

“Expectations” is THE upbeat song of the album, as we see Olivia a few months out of her breakup and thriving. This song is about how her standards have risen since her previous relationship, and how she’s looking for a future husband, making her much more picky about who she dates. This song also states that she’s taken a few months to herself, she’s feeling more secure, and she’s ready to get back out there again… but only with high expectations.

This song is not only catchy and fun, but also relatable to anybody who’s dated someone they regret or has just given someone a shot when they knew they shouldn’t have. Olivia makes a few digs at past flames throughout the song, mentioning she once thought a drug-addicted guy whose parents paid for his car was perfect, and now she has him blocked. The lyrics are funny and play on ridiculous situations one finds themselves in when dating, like the chorus lines, “I won't settle for a guy with a fake job, he seems so desperate for loving, but, baby, I'm not,” or “I'm not kissing any boy that is passive, their indecision is painfully unattractive.”

Believe it or not, I once dated a guy who faked going to college and let his parents pay thousands of dollars on tuition for two years while he sat in his college parking lot every day, probably watching inappropriate videos on his phone. I know… so you can see why this song is pretty fun for me to sing along to. “Past mistakes are just new information” is my new motto!

cigarette smoke

“Cigarette smoke” is about grieving a committed relationship, especially one that was so intertwined in your life that its absence is impossible to ignore. It’s also Olivia’s way of processing everything that happened in the relationship, allowing her to take a step back and see where her previous partner went wrong. This whole album, Olivia is reflecting on her own issues; it feels like she’s finally addressing how lonely and desperate she felt in the relationship because of her partner. It’s kind of like that final letter you send to someone you once loved, getting everything you wanted to say off your chest.

The smoke represents the lingering remnants of her partner, sticking to every facet of her life like the smell of cigarette smoke. She uses tangible things like a shower left on, a quiet house, five beers in the fridge, and a second car missing from her driveway to articulate this grief and establish a tone of loneliness. She references previous songs by calling her partner “honeybee” and mentioning the “begging” she did. She expresses a lot of regret and resentment in this song and suggests her partner chose someone over her with the line, “I resent you for taking her side,” and “some nights can be so fucking lonely but it’s better than beggin for you to stand up for me.”

She ends the song by mentioning how the memories of them are going dark, and that line repeats itself until the music fades out. I enjoyed the imagery of “going dark,” almost like the ending credits of a movie rolling before the screen fades to black. This song felt like the closure she never received, expressing all of those feelings of hurt toward the other person before finally letting their memories go dark.

you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love

This album means a lot to me, not just as someone a couple of months out of a rough breakup, but as someone who also struggles with mental health. I respect Olivia’s honesty and bravery compared to her past albums. You can truly see her growth in the way she approaches this breakup, as in the past she’s made more “petty” songs like “Good For You.”

However, her perspective has matured, as she’s taking accountability of her own faults and really holding a mirror up to the raw, human feelings she doesn’t like to experience. Music should never shy away from the ugly, and Olivia Rodrigo showed she is not afraid of her emotions with her third album “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.”