Album Review: you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love

The cover of "you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love," featuring Olivia Rodrigo swinging on a swing.

My third album you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is out now!!!!

I love this album so much and I am so thrilled that it's finally yours.

The record is a time capsule of a relationship in all of its highs and lows. It's my attempt at capturing love from both sides of the coin.

The hope and the disappointment. The insanity and the clarity.

The entanglement and the unravelling. - Olivia Rodrigo

It feels like not too long ago, Olivia Rodrigo was telling us how she had just gotten her driver's license last week, just like she had always talked about. Olivia went from debuting on the music scene with her breakout single “drivers license” back in 2021 at a mere 17 years old to putting out one of the strongest debut albums ever (across all genres, might I add) with “SOUR.” Three Grammys and several more awards later, she would release “vampire” as a teaser of her second album, “GUTS” which she would release in 2023 not only increasing her popularity but showing a level of range by being able to have ballads such as the album’s lead single but also songs with a quirkier more unique sound like “bad Idea right?” Six years since her mainstream debut, now with a third album, Olivia has established herself as a Pop music savant with her strongest full-length release yet, “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.”

This is an album about love, which shouldn’t surprise you, given the artist or the title. But, as Olivia stated in the opening excerpt included in this review, this album’s biggest strength is the story it tells. You begin with a happy-toned song like “drop dead,” talking about how in love she is with this guy, and the more you start to pay attention, the holes in the relationship begin to form. Going from love that can’t even be comprehended in song with “stupid song,” and then you dig deeper to “the cure” where she feels like no matter how the love feels, it’s missing something and incapable of being the antidote to whatever the issue she’s been running into is. Love can soothe but not fully cure internal wounds. To me, “the cure,” is very much the tipping point in the emotional feel of the entire project.

The tracklist of "you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love," showing Olivia Rodrigo gazing down as she stands next to a swing.

Following it, you get songs like “begged,” where Olivia is getting the response she wanted from that guy, but lacking the feeling of joy and happiness from it because to obtain that response, she had to beg for it. You also get “less,” where she wished the man had less love for her so the disappointment in the relationship could feel better.

Then the album ends with “cigarette smoke”, an absolute masterpiece with a resenting tone, saying, “I thought that we played the perfect couple, 'Til you didn't want the part.” Absolutely heart-wrenching. You experience the roller coaster of what love is, the good and the bad, for better and for worse.

As well as being able to show the range of emotions, her songwriting is even better than her past releases. A song that showcases that is “stupid song,” which, for the record, has a fantastic music video. In the first verse, we already have a poetic line: “They say that honest love is a cage that makes you feel free,” referring to the security that honest love makes you feel. Olivia phenomenally sings the chorus, in which she says, “You're a spark in the dark, and my clothes all caught aflame, You should feel how I feel when somebody says your name, I'm a car speeding down the boulevard without a brake, And I want you more than any stupid song could ever say. I'm a heart made of wax, and I'm melting in the sun. I'm a thread on your shirt that is coming undone. I feel right, I feel wrong, I feel totally insane, and I want you more than any stupid song could ever say”. Often with love, things are cheesy and silly, and Olivia explains that there isn’t any song to describe her love, despite what this song’s subject is. She speeds up the tone she’s singing in the bridge and delivers the lines: “Every night like the one before, Dream of you from like 1 to 4, Positively and truly sure, Nobody's wanted somebody more. It's a thing that I can't ignore. Tell your friends that you're mine, I'm yours. With a hand on my heart, I swore, Nobody's wanted somebody more,” showing that sometimes there’s obsessiveness in love as well. All the way down to the unconscious dreams being about the one you’re in love with for hours. For a song called “stupid song”, it is a masterpiece in its own right.

This is a nearly perfect album. There are no skips in my honest opinion through all 13 tracks. To put out a borderline flawless pop album as your third studio album is an achievement in itself, and as someone who was there when “drivers license” was first released, I am so proud to see her growth as an artist. This is easily a contender for album of the year, and at the time of this writing, we still have half the year left, so that says a lot. My standout tracks are: “drop dead,” “stupid song,” “maggots for brains,” “my way,” “what’s wrong with me” (my personal favorite), and “cigarette smoke.” And I’ll end the review by saying this:

At 17, Olivia released “GUTS” and defied the odds.

At 19, Olivia released “SOUR” and showcased her range.

At 23, Olivia released “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love” and cemented herself as one of the best artists out right now in music and our next pop superstar. And she still has so much more of her future ahead of her.