There is a sound scene in stupid song in which Olivia's melancholic plan suddenly accelerates into a near-out-of-control race. The relationship has just begun and things are already about to go wrong. Nobody says it explicitly. The music says it for them.
That's where you realize what he's really doing with this third album: not telling a love story that ends, but mapping with chronological precision the way love impairs judgment from the beginning. The title is already a diagnosis, probably uttered by someone who was trying to be sarcastic and instead found himself being right.
The album is divided into two sides, Girl So in Love and You Seem Pretty Sad, and the structure works not because it is original as a narrative device, but because Olivia believes in it enough to take it to the end without giving in to the temptation of the radio single disconnected from the context. Twenty-five minutes of side A in which every song could be the beginning of something beautiful, and twenty of side B in which nothing returns to its place.
Side A is built on euphoria as an altered state of consciousness. drop dead it's chamber-pop suspended in the exact moment someone sees their boyfriend in line for the bathroom and mistakes him for an angel on the walls of Versailles. It's not ironic. That's literally how a serious crush works, and Olivia knows it and sings it without winking at the audience.
The butterflies in the stomach resist even when the first signs begin. maggots for brains is the most uncomfortable song on the record: when she sings “Sometimes, in the darkest moments, I even wish for a tragedy/'Cause I know she would come and take care of me real good” there's no ironic distance protecting her. It's a thought that almost everyone has had.
u + me = ♥ it's the moment he engraves their names on the leather seat of the car, a stupid and indelible gesture like all the gestures that really count. Jangle pop has finally arrived in Rodrigo's orbit and sounds as if it's always been there.
The turning point comes and is purplewhich doesn't tell the story of the breakup but of the moment before: when you can no longer distinguish your desires from those of the other person. It's the most restless song on the album, and it deliberately doesn't resolve itself.
Side B begins to demolish with The Curebecomes aware with Begged and then Robert Smith appears in what's wrong with me not as a luxury guest but as a natural interlocutor in a conversation about post-breakup misery. Two generations of romantic unhappiness traveling in unison. It's one of the album's most successful moments, and perhaps it's no coincidence that it comes when Olivia temporarily stops being the sole protagonist of her own story.
begged and less they take a complicated emotion and make it so sharp that it seems obvious. How to beg for affection invalidates its eventual arrival. Like being left well doesn't make the pain any less physical. They are not new concepts, but in his mouth they have the quality of things said for the first time.
expectations, the penultimate one breaks the tension with a synthesizer line and a bridge of unlikely male voices. It's the song where Olivia decides to raise her standards, and she does it with just enough irony to not seem like motivational propaganda. “Now I'm sure / I'm so evolved,” she sings in a tone that may or may not be sincere. Probably both.
cigarette smoke he closes with a domestic inventory: acceptance, a silent house, five beers in the fridge, a single car in the driveway. It's his moment and it works because he doesn't draw any conclusions. Tell me something honest so the memories go dark, sing, and then let your voice die. There is no answer. It shouldn't be there.
Rodrigo is twenty-three years old and already knows that the only way to make music about these things without sounding pathetic is to not try to protect yourself from ridicule.
“you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love” is a record made by someone who accepts seeming at the mercy of their emotions because there is no honest alternative. The technical expertise is there, visible, but never takes over. This is rarer than it seems.
One step forward. Well done Olivia!
SCORE: 8.00
THE VOTES OF OTHERS
Rolling Stone – Rating 9.00
Clash Music – Rating 9.00
Pitchfork – Rating 8.30
Los Angeles Times – Rating 8.00
TO LISTEN NOW
Stupid Song – The Cure – What's Wrong With Me with Robert Smith
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
Nothing. The album works well from start to finish. A story told in music.
