After debuting his collaboration with Olivia Rodrigo at Primavera Sound, Robert Smith used the pop star’s music as a reference point for the Cure’s “upbeat” next album. “It’s really poppy, but it doesn’t compare melodically to the stuff that Olivia does, but it’s my idea of Cure Pop,” he said. “It’s probably 20 BPM slower than anything she does.” Slower than ‘honeybee’? Slower than ‘less’? Did he even receive an advance of the 23-year-old’s latest album before going into the studio to sing ‘what’s wrong with me’? If the Cure’s new album is sadder than ‘the cure’, I’m worried. Of course, this is to say that anyone’s idea of Olivia Rodrigo Pop is fallible, as she anchors in a range of influences that have always included the likes of the Cure and Hole – now also triangulated with Devo, Weyes Blood, and more – while stretching them in subtly unexpected ways. On you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, she charts a romance from its incandescent beginnings to its very last flicker, showcasing new strengths while throwing herself at the mercy of forces beyond her control. The fact that it’s bittersweet isn’t surprising; the execution just keeps getting better.
1. drop dead
The magic of ‘drop dead’ isn’t just how Olivia Rodrigo sounds like “the most alive I’ve ever been” – it’s how she superimposes that aliveness on her surroundings, be it the ghosts of Versailles or the internet, where she pieces together a crush’s past less like a puzzlethan a Frankenstein’s monster. It was a striking lead single, but with each listen new details perk up, especially in Dan Nigro’s production: the ride cymbals emulating the rush of blood when our protagonists are “all pressed up in the bathroom line,” the subtle distortion hinting at the supposed incongruity between a Pisces and a Gemini. I don’t know about them, but ‘drop dead’ makes anxiety and exhilaration sound really good together.
2. stupid song
“I want you more than any stupid song could ever say,” Rodrigo sings in the chorus of a track that, after exploding from its balladic beginnings, does a little more than your standard love song. Nigro’s busy drum programming takes it to the next level (echoing the work of a certain Lorde collaborator, if not the one credited later on the album), a dynamism matched by Rodrigo in the rapturous bridge, emphasizing the motion in “I’m going mad” as if the state of delirium hasn’t already totally consumed her.
3. honeybee
Rodrigo’s best vocal performance? As the totalizing force of infatuation deepens into commitment, its subtle breathlessness recognizes the currents beyond her control, even if the kind she exerts over her voice is impeccable. “But even when I’m quiet/ I love you, baby, I promise,” she sings, less of an affirmation of love than the freedom to express it this way. What’s quietly unfolding in ‘honeybee’, for all its focus on Rodrigo’s voice, is a kind of ego death: when “Here’s to hoping” gives way to a choir, you understand why there’s no me instead of to. Even if this love goes away, even when it colours everything in your periphery, it feels so much bigger than you.
4. maggots for brains
On the bright side, side effects of the beloved’s seemingly temporary absence may include: zombification, colour vision deficiency, and total derailment of the protagonist’s life. The key word is temporary, though, so what better way to accentuate the prescribed daydreaming with some actual dream-pop, which fits into the album’s trajectory instead of feeling like a tossed-off influence.
5. u + me = ˂3
Having established the tenuousness of “forever,” Rodrigo dives headfirst into it, sprinting through the same stylistic signifiers with some added jangle. I’m not a mathematician, but a more accurate representation of a relationship that accounts for the variability of time might be something like ‘u + me = ˂3(t)’, but Rodrigo isn’t scared of how it could evolve just yet. She might even let go of her disdain for yacht rock to win his sister’s affection. That’s commitment.
6. my way
Rodrigo lets some rage out on the new-wavey ‘my way’, giving the old-fashioned jealousy and swagger of some of her older hits a different shine. The maturity and nuance on display throughout the record may win over critics, but straightforward anger is sometimes the only way to get the message across: “Let me be direct: just stop,” she tells the girl who won’t stop flirting with her guy. No need to get all flowery about it.
7. purple
Rodrigo reconsiders the equation in terms of colour: if the lover’s absence has a flattening effect, together their red and blue simply turns her world to purple. It’s sweet, if typical of the way bitterness seems to infect all of the album’s love songs by the end. Co-produced with Jim-E Stack, the track flickers and darkens the melody’s edges, until Rodrigo’s whisper is less a sign of intimacy than loss of self. Romance blurs into codependency, in the strange way that a favorite colour can turn ambiguous, or your favorite florist can become a person to avoid. Nothing feels the same way afterwards – not even the music that precedes it.
8. the cure
The unraveling begins with ‘purple’, but by ‘the cure’ her heart is already filled with doubt; the love that was supposed to be restorative turns actively toxic. Though a single, the acoustic track scans almost like an outlier on you seem pretty sad, whose sadness has so far been expressed on relatively bouncy songs. It’s a chilling display of what Rodrigo can do with the format as an artist who doesn’t overuse it, steadily building the song up as if hanging on for dear life.
9. begged
The album’s second stripped-down track in a row is much more subdued, a fingerpicked ballad that serves as the reflective counterpart to ‘maggots for brains’. If that song aims for metaphor, this one craves truth: no display of affectation can heal romantic misalignment, no grand gesture can compensate for what should come naturally. During its Saturday Night Live debut, Rodrigo was backed by a group of singers that included Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering, but hearing her harmonize with her own voice on record – doing all the heavy lifting – only further drives the point home.
10. what’s wrong with me [feat. Robert Smith]
If name-dropping ‘Just Like Heaven’ on the album’s first song and naming the second single ‘the cure’ wasn’t enough, Rodrigo revealed that the first feature on any of her albums would be Robert Smith. Stylistically, a song like ‘maggots for brains’ sounds way more inspired by a certain side of the Cure, while ‘what’s wrong with me’ is rather nondescript, though still punchy and textured – like Rodrigo’s endearing vocal interplay with Smith, it seems intended to overshadow how scathing and direct the lyrics actually are. Universal, too: Heartbreak may mean different things at different stages in life, but the symptoms – “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep” – are all the same.
11. less
‘less’ is more of a classic piano ballad than ‘honeybee’, if only to underline how the appearance of elegance means little when the message itself is heartbreaking. “I think it was us trying to practice a little bit of restraint,” Rodrigo said in an interview, but its uninhibited vulnerability hardly sounds practiced – even if stretching the word “LAX” to its emotional extreme took hours to perfect.
12. expectations
Rodrigo doubles down on the sense of unruliness while ramping up the pace on ‘expectations’, the song that’s most likely to catch casual fans off guard. Over a dance-punk rhythm and positively silly synth line, the lines “Now I am secure/ I am so evolved” seem to scoff at anyone overeager to praise Rodrigo’s maturity at the three-album mark. Just like ‘less’, it thrives off spontaneity, not calculated deliberation – she might grow over the lyrics “I’m not kissing any boy that is passive/ Their indecision is painfully unattractivе” as soon as they’re written down, but she sure sells them.
13. cigarette smoke
‘cigarette smoke’ may be a bit too obvious (“Some nights can be/ So fucking lonely/ But it’s better than begging for you to stand up for me, honeybee”) and lackluster of a closer, tallying up sentiments and recycling sonic tropes without the surprising twist other songs here offer. I have to highlight PJ Cartwright’s strings, though, as they mirror Rodrigo’s memories begging to be erased – a darkness perhaps not borne of honesty, as she wishes, but through the sheer passage of time. Nigro’s production, suddenly BJ Burton-like, begins to crowd the entire field of vision. Better to burn out than to fade away, they say, yet Rodrigo still ties up everything in a neat bow – a melancholy gracefulness that, as she’s just demonstrated, can still cut like a knife.
