The kids are alright! I'm trying to map SOUR into the musical landscape of my youth and I can see Ms. Rodrigo on the covers of Alternative Press, Rolling Stone, and Seventeen all at once (remember when magazines were so major?). That's crossover appeal, baby! Is this album made for me? Absolutely not. Was it made for teenage Rachel? ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY. Did I listen to sad sad music about breakups that I never actually experienced but wished to feel? CONSTANTLY.
It's no secret to Record Club that I was an emo/pop-punk/scene kid in my heyday of collagen-full knee joints. Olivia Rodrigo gives the bleeding-heart lyricism of Taking Back Sunday, Senses Fail, the Starting Line (the entire Say It Like You Mean It album was about a three-month long relationship!!! BUT PEOPLE WANNA GIVE OLIVIA RODRIGO A HARD TIME HERE ABOUT HERS, WOW OKAY SEXISM), My Chemical Romance, etc., a real run for their money. We've all seen the Paramore comparisons. And it's truly wild to see how the music of my youth, filtered through the massive influence of Taylor Swift, has come back full circle via a Disney star turned massive, I mean MASSIVE, pop artist. I looked at the streams on Spotify and was absolutely floored. Good for her.
What's all the more heartening about her success is that the kids today seem less gatekeeper-y than they were when I was sweating in YMCA basements lusting after drummers who weren't into me because I was ~funny~. Scene kids liked keeping bands to themselves. We cared about "knowing them when they were underground." I had dudes calling me out on my LiveJournal for saying I liked "punk" in my bio but listed New Found Glory as a favorite band so I WAS A TOTAL POSER BITCH (that actually happened). SOUR is genre-free in a way that feels really liberating when it comes to pop music. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I can't see the goth/alt/metal kids these days giving anyone a hard time for getting into this. Gen Z figured out being mainstream and subversive in a lot of ways (love you, Lil Nas X). Again, good for them!
It's a solid debut album that says "Oh you liked that one song, huh? Well, I'm gonna do it again and more!" She's (and her producers) aren't stretching too far beyond the thing that exploded her onto the scene. She has a brand here and as she matures as an artist, I'm sure she'll find new sides of herself to share. But for now, I won't judge her on being a little one-noted because I'm 34 and have you seen the shit I listened to when I was her age? Exactly.
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