Women have a tendency to put everyone else's feelings and responsibilities above their own, even when it's to their own detriment. If a man realized the woman he was with was holding him back in any capacity or was no longer at, or exceeding, his level, he likely wouldn't hesitate to leave her. No inner reflection or weighing of pros and cons needed. Olivia Rodrigo uses her latest album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, to portray this often inevitable dynamic. No, this is not some weird, subservient parasocial relationship analysis that I am "too invested in". I am a firm believer that, as ordinary people, we can use the lives of celebrity figures as examples and learning experiences that can be applied to our own lives. The details of their relationships may be unique, but the emotions they experience are almost always universal.
I've been completely captivated by Olivia Rodrigo and her art since 2021. Belting "deja vu" in my Volkswagen Beetle while going way too fast on the highway going to first period will forever be a core memory of mine. At 23 years old, Olivia has captivated me again. I somehow didn't realize You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love had already been released until two days after it came out, so I felt a little late to the game. No worries, I still made time to deep dive into the album and rank each track because there is of course such a high demand of my opinion.
Here’s a quick little album analysis to give context to my opinion:
I absolutely love this album. Not because I relate to it so much, but because she's insanely smart and has never been so intentional. She realistically takes us through the emotions of a relationship from beginning to end in a way that makes me reflect on my own past experiences as a journey rather than something I resent. She makes the entire journey of a relationship exciting in a way that I can’t wait to go through it all again, despite the inevitable struggle, because it's so worth it to experience emotions that are so perfectly delineated throughout the first half of the album. That, to me, is what makes this record so special. It doesn't glorify heartbreak or romanticize pain, it reminds you that every stage of love is worth experiencing simply because you got to feel something so deeply in the first place.
This is an album designed to be listened to in order if you truly want to grasp the story Olivia Rodrigo is telling. Well... it's not really a story. It's the beginning, middle, and end of her relationship with Louis Partridge. Mind you, I did not know who Louis Partridge was until he was seen with Olivia! Which, in hindsight, actually becomes kind of important. It's a direct callback to the latter end of the album, where she practically reclaims her power and reminds both herself and the listener that she is Olivia Rodrigo, while he was essentially a random guy to most people until they were together. Whether intentional or not, that shift in perspective becomes one of the more interesting arcs of the album.
She foreshadows this concept plenty of times, or at least I think she does, but my favorite and most blatant example comes from the first two songs she released before the album dropped: drop dead and the cure. I know next to nothing about Louis Partridge, and I really don't care to ever find out. I'm completely okay with my only interactions with him being through my good, close, and personal friend Olivia Rodrigo telling me everything I need to know.
drop dead opens with the very first verse of the entire album, where Olivia tells listeners that his favorite song is "Just Like Heaven" because he knows all the words to it, a classic by the legendary rock band The Cure. At first, it just feels like an oddly specific detail about Louis, but by the end of the album it almost feels like Olivia is planting the seed for something much bigger.
Not only is "Just Like Heaven" supposedly one of Louis Partridge's favorite songs, but Gracie Abrams performed a cover of it at Glastonbury in 2025 that many can say she butchered so badly that only two days later, Olivia performed the same song with Robert Smith himself at the very same festival. That performance marked the first public collaboration between the two. Months later, Olivia and Louis split in December. Then, roughly a year after Glastonbury, we get You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, an album that feels absolutely slathered in references to The Cure and an ode to Louis.
And the cherry on top is that the very first person to ever feature on one of Olivia's songs is none other than the lead singer of The Cure, Robert Smith. Baby girl was clearly so deeply hurt that she pulled off one of the most insane clap backs imaginable at Louis Partridge. Throughout the album, she introduces themes of comparing herself to other women, struggling with trust, slowly losing pieces of her individuality within the relationship, and eventually forming severe resentment toward him because of it.
Whether she intended it this way or not, I can't help but see the Robert Smith feature as symbolic. She makes a point to herself, and maybe even to him, that the band he idolizes the most is now collaborating with her. In a sense, blatantly positioning herself as an idol that Louis is now forced to see her as. That's an incredibly powerful image when you consider everything else this album is trying to say.
Every time Louis goes onto Spotify, or whatever platform he uses, and types "The Cure" into the search bar hoping the '70s rock band pops up, he'll instead be greeted with something like this: the cure by Olivia Rodrigo, the cure explicit version , the cure with official video, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, Olivia Rodrigo's Spotify profile, and then, finally, the rock band.
The title of one of his favorite bands is now permanently attached to one of Olivia's songs. Whether he likes it or not, there's now an unavoidable association between the two. So much so that I could even see him avoiding searching for the band altogether because it might remind him of Olivia and everything that came with their relationship. Obviously that's complete speculation on my part, but it's funny to imagine. On some level, Olivia Rodrigo has arguably surpassed The Cure in terms of mainstream popularity. Fact check. Olivia currently has 69.1 million monthly Spotify listeners, while The Cure has 25.7 million. So, for the foreseeable future, Olivia's song will almost always appear before the band itself whenever someone searches "The Cure."
Repetitive themes:
Hoping you've already listened to the album so you have accurate context for whatever bullshit I'm about to say, it became very clear to me through her lyrics, music videos, and even some songs cover art that themes of the body are aggressively expressed throughout the entire album. She repeatedly uses physical words like heart, head, stomach, gut, poison, bloodstream, hands, eyes, face, mouth, kissing, sleep, bed, skin, and unraveling, furthering those nouns with supporting verbs and sensations like butterflies, nausea, racing, melting, shaking, can't eat, and can't sleep. The album never once blatantly says she's emotional about something. Instead, it's, "This is how my body is reacting." She describes emotions as physical sensations rather than abstract feelings. I think that's an incredibly intentional choice because it makes every emotion feel involuntary. She's not choosing to feel this way. Her body is reacting before her mind can even process what's happening, almost as if the relationship is physically happening to her rather than something she's actively participating in.
The second major theme throughout her lyrics is motion. Her journey through love was never stagnant or calm. She constantly uses words and phrases like walking, driving, speeding, racing, going home, leaving, staying, running, spiraling, hanging on, falling, reaching, carving, stepping, and crossing. Funny enough, the phrases she's using to take us through her journey are all the very things that mirror the bodily injuries and illnesses she keeps describing. The exhilarating language she uses to portray a relationship constantly in motion become the direct cause of the symptoms she's experiencing. She's always running toward something she believes will make her happier, healthier, or more secure, but by the end of the album you realize she's actually been running herself into the ground the entire time. The constant movement that once felt exciting slowly transforms into exhaustion, until it causes her to perish within the relationship. Looking back, it's almost impossible to separate the themes of the body and motion because they feed directly into one another. The more she moves through the relationship, the sicker she becomes, and the sicker she becomes, the more desperately she continues searching for something that will finally make her feel okay.
Here's a hill chart of the album:
Below I have ranked each track off this album from least favorite to favorite (not in order of the album) but please keep in mind that I do not uttterly dislike any of these songs, they are all great! But if you disagree with my rank, as the great Tamara Judge from The Real House Wives of Orange County said, THATS MY OPINION.
13: My Way
Yes, this is my least favorite song on the album. I know. There are two major parts of it that leave a bad taste in my mouth, the musicality and the lyrics. So, quite literally everything about the song.
It's not a bad song by any means, and it definitely carries remnants of her past songs like bad idea right?, brutal, and good 4 u when it comes to the musicality and overall style. Personally, I've found myself gravitating away from, and skipping, Olivia Rodrigo songs that lean more into the angsty, early 2000s rock sound. That's just how my brain operates. Nothing personal. I will say, though, that I can stomach the previous songs I just listed more than this one because of their themes. my way feels somewhat randomly placed in the tracklist, and I'm honestly not sure there would've been a better or worse position for it. Of course, it wasn't my relationship, so I have absolutely no say in how she chose to tell her story, but this song has always felt slightly out of place to me. One could argue that about nine of the thirteen songs on this album revolve around how self conscious Olivia became within the relationship. The thing that irks me about my way is that she expresses insecurity in a way she hasn't before. Olivia has a history of artistically projecting her insecurities surrounding other women and the role they play in her relationships. The main theme of SOUR revolved around the aftermath of a relationship and the role another girl played in its downfall, while also touching on how she never felt like the "cool girl" she believed everyone else was. In GUTS, she wasn't writing about a boy or a romantic relationship at all. She was writing about herself, her identity, insecurity, fame, and growing up. Once again, she explored the internal battles she faces with comparison and self consciousness around other women through songs like lacy, obsessed, and pretty isn't pretty.
Back to this song.
This is different. Olivia is calling out one specific woman who either became, or almost became, a part of her relationship with Louis, and she is PISSED. In her past songs about women, there was always a "woe is me" element. She would wallow in self pity and direct most of the hurt inward. The difference here is that she's directing her anger outward, at another woman instead of her literal boyfriend. Naturally, we've all probably done this once or twice in our lives. It's easier for Olivia to address the girl who existed in Louis's life than it is to confront Louis himself because it gives her a greater sense of control over the situation. It's much easier to compete with another woman than it is to admit the person you love allowed you to feel like you were competing in the first place. When, in reality, this song should have never had a reason to exist. Louis should have never created enough space for another woman to become such a significant source of emotional turmoil, and Olivia should have never felt like she had to compare herself to women from his past. He should have shut that shit DOWN, and Olivia should have never been put in a position where she felt the need to question herself.
When Olivia sings, "you know he's with me, like obviously," she admits that it's embarrassingly getting to her. Well... does Louis know he's obviously with you?
"You keep calling but you never get the message."
Why is she even able to call him?
"Where'd you get that confidence from? Last time I checked I won."
What exactly did you win? Is Louis Partridge a prize or something? I'm very confused.
Honestly, it almost seems like whatever girl she's talking about might have won because Olivia can't stop thinking about her. Her anger is not directed at the right person. But that's okay for the time being.
Later, in songs like the cure and cigarette smoke, she admits that there was probably nothing Louis could have done to make her feel completely secure within the relationship because she's still fighting battles that existed long before he came into her life. So maybe this resentment shouldn't be directed at the other girl at all. Maybe some of it belongs with Louis, but most of it belongs with herself. Not in a self blaming way, but in the sense that she's beginning to recognize these are wounds only she can heal. Not to pull out the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook, but admitting you have a problem is widely recognized as the first step toward recovery, finding a solution, and creating change. Whether she realizes it or not, I think this album is documenting that first step.
Overall, I just don't enjoy listening to songs centered around women tearing down another woman because I genuinely think that mindset can slowly bleed into my own life if I consume enough of it. Maybe that's dramatic, but that's just how I feel. I don't want to walk away from a song feeling more insecure than I was before I hit play. Of course, Olivia is only 23 years old, living in a society where women are constantly pitted against one another, and she's doing it on one of the biggest stages in the world. She's bound to compare herself and receive criticism.
But come on, babe.
You're Olivia Rodrigo.
Act like it.
I think I'm just tired of the constant insecurity talk, and I genuinely can't wait for the day she makes an album with zero themes of self depreciation. Not because those feelings aren't valid, but because I hope one day she won't have to convince herself she's enough. Once again, you’re THE Olivia Rodrigo!
12: u + me = <3
This song comes before my way, and it's funny to think she was feeling all gushy in this song before everything begins to unravel. This song is really cute, but I just don't find myself caring too much when it's played. Honestly, I platonically think of my girl friends when I listen, not so much a guy. The first line states, "I think that you're killer... with your floppy hair." I'll touch more on the meaning of death and how she uses it almost oxymoronically to foreshadow the evolution and eventual downfall of her relationship with Louis Partridge in my analysis of drop dead. For now, just know that I don't think Olivia ever chooses her words carelessly, especially when they continue appearing throughout the album. This is the fourth song in the tracklist, still sitting comfortably in the blissful honeymoon phase of the relationship before things begin to get rocky. She playfully hints at the fact that she already knows what is causing the sickness and pain that will ultimately lead to her death. But while she's living in the excitement of it all, she finds his floppy hair cute and casually describes it as "killer."
Funny, right?
It's almost like she's joking about something the listener won't fully understand until much later in the album. Looking back, words that initially seem playful suddenly feel loaded with detriment. The song talks about how she feels completely okay rushing this relationship because she has such a good feeling about him. It causes her to do childish things like carving their names into a car seat and telling him they should get married when they're 25, all things she admits she's done before in past relationships. She's fully leaning into the fantasy because, at this point in the album, she genuinely believes this relationship will be different from all the others.
My favorite line comes in the chorus when she sings, "I've got a feeling wounds are healing." Once again, she's returning to the recurring themes of the body, sickness, and recovery. As we'll later find out, her wounds were nowhere close to being healed. They were simply being temporarily covered by the excitement of falling in love. That cut of insecurity never actually closed, leaving room for the relationship, and eventually Louis, to unknowingly infect it. I don't think Louis created those wounds. I think he unknowingly exposed wounds that had been there long before he entered the picture. She even admits in the song that she gets overwhelmed and too far ahead of herself, which becomes one of the defining patterns of the entire album. She doesn't just fall in love. She sprints so fast that she falls flat on her face!
11: expectations
Such a realistic portrayal of a post breakup, bad bitch, manic mental upgrade everyone experiences. Is she healed and ready for the next relationship? No. Not at all, in fact. Olivia is riding that angry breakup high where she's basically like, "Wow... I can't believe I put up with that. I hate him." She creates a list of new standards that she thinks will guide her through the rest of the breakup, but does she actually mean any of it?
She goes from singing, "Took a couple months but now I am secure. I am so evolved. Now I ask for more." to "But in a couple months, a man will be procured. He will be evolved and I will be adored," completely holding onto that ego satisfying fantasy where your ex suddenly realizes what he lost, changes everything about himself (for a week), and comes crawling back.
Yeah... because that always happens and always ends well.
I actually think that's what makes this song so realistic. She's trying so hard to convince herself that she's moved on, but the entire song still revolves around him. Even her "growth" is dependent on imagining his reaction and contradicting their past relationship. She isn't fantasizing about becoming happier for herself. She's fantasizing about him finally recognizing what he lost.
My favorite part is the ending where she's chanting, almost like she's trying to convince herself in a mirror, "I've got big expectations," and what's immediately echoed back is a robotic male voice chanting, "She's got real big expectations." If that was intentional, then that production choice is fantastic. Deep down, she doesn't actually believe a real man will fulfill or surpass the standards she's suddenly set for herself. The robotic voice almost feels like society talking back to her, mocking the idea that women can have high standards without being seen as unrealistic. The only man who can fulfill and validate her new expectations is in fact, a fake robotic man. Whether that's what Olivia intended or not, that's how I hear it. The repetition starts to feel less like confidence and more like self reassurance. The more she says it, the less convinced I become that she actually believes it.
10: less
Less is a stunning song that directly carries over the lyrics and themes from what's wrong with me, where Olivia is physically ill but realizes she's been saying the same thing for so long with no antidote in sight. Instead of her taking action and walking away from the relationship, Louis bites the bullet and ends it himself. Heartbreakingly, he explains that he loves her so much that he can't bear to continue a relationship that they both know isn't working.
How confusing it must have been for Olivia to process why the person who supposedly loved her so much would leave instead of simply changing. I think that's one of the most heartbreaking questions the album asks. If someone loves you, why wouldn't they just become the person you need them to be? That is still a question I probably will not find the answer to until my brain develops. I can only imagine the feeling of abandonment during one of the lowest points in her relationship while desperately trying to make sense of the situation. The person she desperately wants to cure her illness is the very cause of it, but the two simply cannot coexist in a healthy way. That's the tragedy of this song. Neither of them is necessarily the villain, but love alone isn't enough to fix what they're going through. Sometimes loving someone also means recognizing that you're no longer good for each other, no matter how badly you wish the opposite were true. It's a truly catastrophic song that I think so many people can relate to.
He loves her so much that he would rather watch her cry on a curb at LAX than continue the toxic cycle that he knows will ultimately make her drop dead (lol). As painful as that decision is, I almost see it as the first truly selfless act that many relationships face. She describes Louis choosing the option that hurts both of them the most because, in the long run, it's the best one. That's an incredibly mature kind of love, even if it's devastating to experience from Olivia's perspective.
9: cigarette smoke
This is a beautiful, terrifyingly sad song, and I honestly think I would appreciate it even more if I were going through a breakup, or maybe if the album had come out in the middle of winter craving a cozy seasonal depressive episode.
She talks about the physical triggers that continue to remind her of Louis long after the relationship has ended. Certain things will simply be connected to him for as long as they exist. She describes how the smell seeps into her bones, illustrating that he's still attached to her in ways she can't control. Once again, Olivia returns to the body. Even after the relationship is over, she can't escape it because his memory has become something physical rather than emotional. He's no longer just living in her mind but her senses are penetrated.
She also reflects on how she regrets both him and the choices she made throughout the relationship, while admitting that he repeatedly took other people's sides instead of hers. That realization feels almost worse than the breakup itself because she's no longer grieving who she thought he was. She's grieving the version of herself that kept naively hoping he would eventually choose her. When she sings, "Some nights can be so fucking lonely, but it's better than begging for you to stand up for me, honeybee," she's directly referencing two earlier songs on the album, begged and honeybee. Honeybee represented the idealized version of Louis she fell in love with at the very beginning. The version she believed would never be capable of causing the pain she's now describing. The same version she spent the rest of the album begging to come back.
I absolutely love how the final lyric of the entire album, "memories go dark," slowly fades into silence. I genuinely can't think of a better way to end this album because it perfectly captures what it feels like to slowly block someone out after loving them so deeply. You're desperately trying to find something horrible about the relationship so the good memories don't hurt as much.
AND IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT, GOOD FOR YOU.
Overall, this is such a damaging song, and I'm honestly really happy she chose to end the album with cigarette smoke instead of expectations. That would've felt far too cliché. Ending on expectations would've suggested the story was about moving on. Ending on cigarette smoke reminds us that healing isn't linear. Sometimes the healthiest decision is still the one that hurts the longest.
8: what’s wrong with me
Not only does this song scratch an itch in my brain, but it also feels like an onion, revealing another layer every time I listen to it. It's a direct call back to the period leading up to their breakup. This song falls between begged, where Olivia is emotionally torturing herself by begging Louis to change even though she knows he naturally can't, and less, where he ends the relationship for a multitude of reasons, mainly because she's clearly unhappy and he can't seem to find a way to fix it.
If you think back to the earlier song the cure, Olivia already introduces recurring medical imagery through antidotes, poison, medication, healing, and a cure. What's wrong with me shifts the question. Instead of asking whether he can heal her, she's asking, "Can he love me the way I need to be loved?" and, more importantly, "Why am I reacting this way?" She's desperately trying to figure out what is suddenly "wrong" with her and why she feels so emotionally and physically unhealthy. Robert Smith doesn't simply appear as a guest vocalist. Instead of merely echoing Olivia, the song becomes a conversation about whether overwhelming love is romance, obsession, anxiety, or illness.
What's especially interesting to me is that this is the only song on the album featuring Robert Smith. Whether Olivia intended this or not, I can't help but hear Robert as a symbolic stand in for Louis. Robert Smith is someone Louis publicly admired, making the feature feel even more significant. It almost feels like Olivia intentionally invited someone Louis looked up to into the conversation, allowing him to voice the perspective Louis himself never directly could. I don't necessarily think Robert is literally playing Louis, but I do think the duet allows the song to function almost like a conversation between Olivia and Louis rather than simply Olivia singing to herself.
Later in the chorus, Olivia and Robert almost begin singing at one another as they repeatedly state, " I think you’re what’s wrong with me?” It's as if they're both acknowledging that they already know the answer, but neither of them wants to be the one to vocally solidify it. The song introduces all of these things people typically do when they're trying to feel better, like seeing a doctor, yet nothing ever actually resolves the feeling. Instead, the conclusion keeps circling back to the same realization. No medication, no reassurance, no amount of love, and no outside opinion can fix something that ultimately has to come from within. That realization seamlessly leads into less, where Louis finally makes the heartbreaking decision to end the relationship.
7: honeybee
Olivia uses this song to describe the softness in her relationship with Louis. It's that phase of a relationship where everything feels calm, and you're observing all the little qualities you love about the other person and about the relationship itself. It's such a sweet song because she's taking in all of its beauty while quietly hoping none of it ever becomes a fleeting moment.
I love the part where she sings, "Everything I own just feels like ours." This is only the third song on the album, and she's already foreshadowing a portion of the downfall that I'll touch on later in my analysis of purple. At first, it sounds like one of the sweetest lyrics on the album, but looking back, it's also one of the most concerning. She's no longer describing two people sharing a life together. She's beginning to blur the line between what belongs to her and what belongs to them. Without realizing it, she's slowly replacing "me" with "we," and that's a pattern that continues throughout the rest of the album.
Once again, even in one of her happiest songs, Olivia quietly foreshadows the end of the relationship by disguising it with beautiful qualities. That's something I really admire about her songwriting. The happier the relationship becomes, the more subtle the warnings are. You don't notice them until you've reached the end of the album and work your way backward. Suddenly, all of the sweetest moments carry an entirely different meaning.
6: the cure
The second song Olivia released before the album was the cure. I was actually lying on a beach in Italy when I tuned in the day it came out, but I had to immediately turn it off because it was completely messing with the vibes. LOL. Once again, she released a song about being insecure, and I couldn't bear to let that ruin my perfect mental state while the UV index was a 9 and I was clutching an Aperol Spritz.
Of course, it's much higher up on my ranking now, so I obviously came around to it.
I've already mentioned the significance this song plays in both the album and her relationship, but I genuinely think this is the song that tips off the emotional breakdown of everything that follows. It perfectly captures the rotten feeling she experienced before the rest of the album spirals into despair and chronic emotional illness.
I want to call back to u + me = <3, where I brought up the lyric, "I've got a feeling wounds are healing." This song completely contradicts all of the certainty she had about both him and her healing journey. Before the chorus, she sings, "I thought I found the antidote with you," admitting that she genuinely believed he would be the person to erase all of her worries, insecurities, and emotional baggage simply by loving her. But she's been proven wrong, and she's now forced to confront the realization that if he can't fix her, then nobody can except herself. I honestly think this is the emotional turning point of the entire album. Up until this moment, Olivia believes love is capable of healing her. From this point forward, she slowly begins realizing that love was never the cure in the first place. It's also an exceptional sounding song, and I don't think enough people talk about the way she uses her voice to tell the story. I want to point out the gradual progression from the verse, to the pre chorus, to the chorus. She begins almost whispering, then settles into the soft voice she carries throughout most of the song before exploding into a passionate, guttural yell during the chorus. It doesn't even sound like she's trying to sing anymore. It sounds like she's chanting, right up until the final lyric when she declares, "It will never be the cure."
She whispers confessions like, "Used to play a game in my head when I'd date a guy..." and, "I thought I found the antidote this time," before screaming lyrics like, "My head is full of poison," and, "And it feels like medication and it's good for me, I'm sure." She's yelling because she's devastated that his love isn't working the way she convinced herself it would.
Ugh... I can't really explain it any better than that, but I just think it's so unbelievably cool. It's one of those songs where the production is doing just as much storytelling as the lyrics themselves. It adds so much depth, emotion, and relatability to the entire experience. Every time Louis searches for the band the cure, he will be faced with a direct call out to him, screaming the lowest point she’s felt with him and how he was not enough.
5: begged
Ladies. Unfortunately. We have all been here.
Olivia captures the most frustrating and confusing stage of a relationship in begged. Not the beginning, when you're blissfully unaware, and not the end, when the wreckage is already visible. This is the middle. The stage where you are trying to force someone to change when it is not possible.
This is the moment she quietly abandons her own standards, not because she's weak, but because keeping the relationship feels safer than admitting it's broken. So she stops asking am I getting what I need and starts asking how little can I survive on. And what she wanted was never extravagant. Reassurance. Loyalty. Attention. To feel chosen. That's it. The tragedy is that the second you have to beg for those things, they stop feeling like love and start feeling like a chore. Love turns to a burden the moment someone has to convince another person to love them the way they deserve.
Which is exactly why this song has to sit right before what's wrong with me.
There's a lyric early on where she frames her love as pure devotion, while treating her own emotional needs like an inconvenience she's apologizing for. She's not ashamed of loving him. She's ashamed of needing anything back. Then she reaches for an image of permanence, something meant to hold steady, to keep from drifting. But that same image is also unable to move even if it wanted to. That's not an accident. She's not describing stability. She's describing a trap dressed up as loyalty.
By the second verse, the imagery of illness and entrapment returns — but this time it's not the relationship that feels suffocating. It's her entire life. Same as we've seen before: the relationship has fused so completely with her identity that she can't tell anymore where he ends and she begins. And that's the brilliance of the transition into what's wrong with me. This song asks, why won't you love me the way I need? The next one asks something far more devastating: why do I need you to love me this way at all?
4: stupid song
Olivia Rodrigo ironically made this song because she's practically begging everyone to understand that she wants Louis Partridge more than any love song could ever describe. Yet now, it's become a song people throw on whenever they need a stupid love song.
She once again shows us her inevitable habit of catapulting herself headfirst into a relationship the moment it feels right. Interestingly, there are very few lyrics across the entire album that actually describe things Louis does for her that justify the level of love and obsession she develops for him. Most of what she loves about him seems to come from how he makes her feel rather than what he actually does. She loves the feeling of being in love more than she loves specific actions Louis performs. I don't necessarily think that's a flaw in the songwriting. I think it's intentional. It shows just how quickly she builds an entire future around a feeling before there's enough evidence to support it.
Maybe she is getting ahead of herself, but it's cute. Who doesn't love the feeling of having a crush? There's something really innocent about this song because, unlike the rest of the album, she's not overthinking yet. She's just excited. Not much else to say about this one because, honestly, you just need to throw it on while going for a little run.
3: maggots for brains
I don't hear enough people talking about, or even playing, maggots for brains when it perfectly describes that phase of a relationship where everything you're doing feels cute simply because you're so in love. When in reality it's actually blindly damaging. It's one of the many reasons Olivia eventually writes songs like the cure, what's wrong with me, begged, and less. To me, this song acts as the bridge between the carefree excitement of the first half of the album and the emotional collapse of the second. It's where unhealthy habits stop feeling romantic and quietly start becoming destructive.
I don't mean to sound pessimistic because, for one, I think this song is incredibly fun and gets me moving every single time. It's designed to make you happy and want to dance, even though the lyrics describe toxic habits she's completely fallen entranced to. I actually think that's what makes it so clever. Sonically, it's one of the happiest songs on the album, while lyrically it's one of the biggest cries for help. Olivia has always been good at disguising devastating lyrics behind upbeat production, and this song might be one of the best examples of that.
She literally says her days have become so mundane that she can't leave the house, can't write, doesn't want to go to parties, and feels completely empty, all because the only thing motivating her or giving her any lust for life is that damn boy. That's an enormous amount of emotional responsibility to place on another person, even if she doesn't realize she's doing it. In the chorus, she foreshadows her future illness with lyrics like, "I'm a zombie in my body," "I'm a train off of a track," and "I feel rotten," explaining that she only feels that way whenever her "baby," Louis Partridge, goes away. Metaphorically, she's pretty much calling him a ventilator. The moment he's gone, she stops functioning.
In the second verse, she explains that the only attention she wants is his. My favorite part is when she sings, "I even wish for a tragedy 'cause I know he'd come over and take real good care of me," alluding, once again, to the eventual downfall of their relationship. Specifically, it reminds me of less, where she can't understand why he chose to remove himself from the relationship instead of staying and taking care of her through her emotional illness. She spends so much of the album hoping love will save her that it's almost unimaginable to her when the person she expected to rescue her decides to walk away instead.
It's ranked so high because I absolutely love the way it makes me want to boogie, and I am OBSESSED with the way she screams, "What can I do but think of you?" It genuinely makes me feel 15 years old again. That's probably the biggest compliment I can give any Olivia Rodrigo song. It somehow captures that dramatic, all consuming teenage feeling of having a crush while still making complete sense as an adult who's experienced what happens when those feelings aren't kept in check.
2: purple
Purple. Oh purple. This song is ranked number two for so many reasons, but mostly because it hits so close to home. Olivia talks about the intersection of her life and Louis's through the idea that what was once separate has now become completely intertwined. Her life was blue, his was red, and now everything she sees and knows is purple. It's a beautiful concept, but ultimately we're listening to Olivia Rodrigo lose herself in the fantasy she's created. She's building a life for the two of them without stopping to consider herself as an individual. She even admits in the chorus that she "melts" with him. She doesn't say they melt together or that he melts with her. That tiny wording choice completely changes the meaning for me. She says she melts with him, almost implying she's the one dissolving while he remains intact. Whether intentional or not, it creates an imbalance where she's the one sacrificing pieces of herself in order to become "us."
I mentioned earlier that I had no idea who Louis Partridge was until Olivia brought him out of the depths of wherever the fuck. In this song, she describes giving so much of herself to him that her life rapidly becomes his life. Completely entranced by his love, she convinces herself that it's a naturally beautiful thing to do. It's almost as if she mistakes losing herself for falling in love. It's like she gave him her life, and in doing so, lost her own, which many women fall victim of throughout history. One of my favorite details is that she says she sees the world in purple, not that the world is purple. I think that's a really important distinction because it tells us the world hasn't actually changed. He hasnt done anything to confirm the tangible meshed reality, she’s only wearing purple colored lenses. Love has completely altered the way she's experiencing reality. Everything is filtered through him.
My favorite part, and honestly maybe my favorite moment on the entire album, is in the second verse where it almost feels like she briefly jumps out of this delusional purple world and realizes just how entranced she sounds. if you really listen to the song, you'll notice she uses this soft, airy voice almost the entire time. Then she reaches the following lyrics. Suddenly, her voice becomes stronger, more grounded, and much more balanced, almost like she's finally speaking from reality instead of fantasy. It's one of the only moments in the song where she sounds fully awake.
"It's a small world when it only can revolve around us two..."
Not only did she lose herself, but it almost sounds like she lost everyone else in the process of trying to build a perfect life for the two of them. That line feels like one of the few moments of complete clarity she has on the entire album. For a split second, she recognizes that her entire world has become one person, and instead of sounding romantic, it suddenly sounds incredibly isolating.
"It's crazy, I had big dreams 'til I tied myself to you."
Then, almost immediately, she's pulled right back into the airy trance with,
"And you kiss my neck..."
reverting to the dreamlike state she's been living in throughout the relationship. It's almost like Olivia keeps waking herself up, only to willingly fall asleep again.
GIRL. RUN. THIS AIN'T HEALTHY.
1: drop dead
And my absolute favorite song off the album, and potentially my favorite of all Olivia Rodrigo songs...
DROP DEAD!!!!
A song that has you kicking your feet and daydreaming about some random, perfect guy that only ChatGPT can generate while you listen. I'm fully confident this will be my number one most listened to song of the year by a landslide.
Overall, it's nothing but good vibes, and I genuinely think it's Olivia's first song where she's completely, unapologetically elated over a boy. Like, yes, please tell me absolutely everything about yourself. I MUST KNOWWWW. She perfectly broadcasts what its like to have a fun not so little crush where all she can feel is excitement towards a possibility of learning more about Louis. But, of course, the brightest, happiest, and most euphoric song on the entire album is literally called drop dead. Olivia, we all caught that.
She openly admits that this person, and the overwhelming joy he brings her, will literally lead to her death. If he kisses her she might fall so hard in love that she will be rushed to the hospital and put on code blue. It's such a bizarre contradiction because every feeling she's describing sounds exciting, hopeful, and full of possibility, yet the title has already told us exactly how the story ends. She's foreshadowing every track that follows, filling our heads with imagery of illness, poison, medication, and a sickness she can't quite explain.
At first, it sounds like she's talking about dying from how intensely she's falling in love, something we've all exaggerated at one point or another. But once you've listened to the entire album, the title transforms. "Drop dead" stops sounding like a playful expression and starts sounding like a warning. She was telling us the ending from the very beginning.
She screams,
"Kiss me and I might drop dead."
And somehow that's both the happiest and saddest lyric on the entire album.
So class, what have we learned from Miss Rodrigo? Have a crush. Fall in love. Be delusional for like... two weeks. But please, for the love of God, don't let a man become your ventilator and never forget who you are.