Two years after taking the music industry by storm with the release of  her Grammy-award-winning debut album, SOUR which spawned record-breaking singles, drivers license’ and good 4 u, Olivia Rodrigo is back with GUTS, her sophomore LP released on September 8, 2023. Prior to the release of GUTS, there was a fear among many Twitter/X users that the album would just be Sour PT 2  and would not be able to live up to its predecessor. However, GUTS  manages to completely exceed the high expectations left by her debut, blowing SOUR completely out of the water.  Co-written with her frequent collaborator Dan Nigro, GUTS is angstier and less restrained while still feeling like a natural progression from SOUR. Being 19 for most of the creation of this album, which Olivia Rodrigo described as a year “filled with lots of confusion, mistakes, awkwardness, & good old fashioned teen angst,”. The album was supported with two singles, “vampire” and “bad idea,right?”  both songs reaching the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100. The lead single “vampire”, was an explosive introduction to this new era and how elevated it was from Sour, starting off as a piano ballad similar to songs from her debut like “traitor”  before transitioning into its cathartic angst-filled bridge with definitely more pop rock. The song details a relationship with an older partner who took advantage of her to the point where it completely drained her. The single topped the charts and has been acclaimed by critics and lisenters alike. “bad idea, right?” is probably her most unique track and proved to be quite divisive in her fanbase, with a loud minority of “livies” believing the song is terrible. However,  while I don’t think it wasn’t the best choice for a single, I do believe  this is one of the best songs on the album and the music video is incredibly well done along with the music video for “vampire”, both of them being directed by Petra Collins.

The album is filled with great songs, but some of the standouts include the opening track, “all american b-ch,” which addresses the expectation of women to not display any type of unhappiness, the title being inspired by a Joan Didion essay where she uses the term, as well as “get him back! ” which was supported by a music video filmed on an iPhone 15 in collaboration with Apple. The song is pop punk that incorporates the style of “talk rapping”. The song full of contradictory statements that toys with the double meaning of the title, writing about winning her ex-partner back and getting revenge, with incredibly fun lyrics like “I want to meet his mom, just to tell her her son sucks”, this was an immediate fan favorite and was performed by Olivia along with “vampire”at the MTV Video Music Awards. ”lacy” and “love is embarrassing” were both songs that did a complete 180, as I referred to them as the worst two songs from the album, but they’ve grown on me completely, with the latter becoming my all-time favorite song Olivia has put out. While there are zero bad songs on the album, I would say that “logical” is probably the weakest, as the gut wrenching bridge is the most memorable part, and “two plus two equals five,” while effective in conveying the message of the song, is, in my opinion, the worst lyric in the album. “pretty isn’t pretty” is, in my opinion, the best song on the album by a longshot, serving as commentary on the unattainable standards of beauty and how it is to keep up with ever-changing trends of what we should look like. Olivia’s songs are known for having dynamic bridges, and “pretty isn’t pretty”’s bridge is one of the best examples of these. The closing track, “teenage dream,” is about Olivia’s fear of losing the best parts of herself as she grows up, ending the song as well as the album with a question: “They all say that it gets better, but what if I don’t?” leaving the listeners with a sense of uncertainty about what’s next to come. 

Overall, this is a fantastic follow-up to her debut that shows her artistic growth without being too different from SOUR,disputing a completely ridiculous claim that Olivia wouldn’t be able to show any progress. Unfortunately, the album was overshadowed by speculation about who the songs could be about, with many people for some reason believing that songs like “logical” and “vampire” are about Taylor Swift and Olivia having to give writing credits to Swift and Jack Antonoff in one of SOUR’s singles, “Deja vu”, due to an interpretation of Swift’s 2019 song “Cruel Summer. Despite the stupidity of that theory, whether the songs are about a failed relationship or a legal dispute, they shouldn’t be the focal point of the album. The album is great, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it won Olivia a fourth Grammy, if not more. My favorite songs from the albums are “love is embarrassing”, and “pretty isn’t pretty”. I 100% recommend giving this album a listen.