The Rewind

 

The average musician is over 40, but the average age of the Billboard Top 100 artist (The week of 01/13/2024) is 26.9 years old. At a time where Taylor Swift continues to build her legacy there is youth waiting in the wings. Billie Eilish, Jaden Hossler, Gayle, The Kid Laroi, Nessa Bartlett, NLE Choppa, the list goes on and on. For this metal loving buffoon, one stands above all others.

Olivia Rodrigo, the former Disney star from ‘High School Musical, The Musical, The Show’ released one of my favorite albums of 2021 with Sour. An album that is categorized as Pop, one in which I have never agreed with. Oliva has an incredible ability to genre blend, appealing to both Pop and Alternative music fans.

The debut album from Olivia Rodrigo, begins with a bang. In ‘brutal’ Olivia channels a lower tempo Riot Girl sound, something that I thought at the time was very difficult to capture, and that hasn’t changed three years later.

You might be thinking, this is another one of my takes that is a little hot. How could an 18 year old former Disney star do that, let alone not sound like a whiny teenager while doing so, and the answer is simple. 

Olivia DOES take you through the mind of an 18 year old, expressing emotions, but does so in a way that is more nueanced then you would expect. There are multiple ballads on the album that paint an incredible picture. This is a person who has experienced pain, joy, jealousy, and happiness, conveying those emotions with incredible confidence. 

Although not a ballad, one of the songs that has the confidence I’m talking about is ‘jealousy, jealousy’. A vocal and bass driven track, that's right I said bass driven. A real breath of fresh air for somebody who listens to bands that are notorious for tracking their bass. In addition to ‘jealousy, jealousy’, is another song that has fantastic use of the bass, but is the most controversial song of the album.

‘good 4 u’ is a mid-2000's hit of Pop-Punk nostalgia. The radio smash hit that has songwriting credits to Hayley Williams of Paramore. Now this is just my humble opinion but it is a bunch of bullshit. If you look in the Oxford English Dictionary, inspiration and copy are much different. ‘Stay With Me’, ‘Blurred Lines’, and ‘Ice Ice Baby’ are copies. With that being said, I can’t argue that ‘good 4 u’ was inspired by the song ‘Misery Business’, but saying it is a copy is a reach.

What isn’t a reach is that Oliva, even at 18, writes songs that could’ve been written by somebody ten years her senior. Sour was an album I loved when it was released and three years later, it still is; and is one that I have constantly had on repeat of late. 

If you haven’t listened to it yet, or you aren’t sure if it needs a rewind, I can assure you it does. 

Copyright 2024: All Writing Owned by Justin Grevencamp (Atonal Asides Blog)

All images of album covers used are for free use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976