olivia rodrigo sets a record

"good 4 u" was made 4 me

second #1

https://i.imgur.com/ty8C7Vo.jpg

album is pretty good! a very solid pop-singer-songwriter debut. she indeed really could use more lyrical range though lol

highlights are "brutal" with its elvis costello interpolation and "jealousy, jealousy"

My CD arrives tmrrw!

OK, listening online now... "1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back" is sure one for the songs that sound like other songs books, LOL

swift & antonoff are credited on it for the "new year's day" rip

Haha, yeah just looked that up.

they should have credited costello though for "brutal"

which EC song does that "interpolate"?

(I'm hearing the above-discussed Alanis similarities more in the context of the full album)

she indeed really could use more lyrical range though lol

haha - by the time you get to "Happier," it's almost like a parody of a breakup album ("We broke up a month ago..."). I like a good waltz, tho

pump it up xp

"Jealousy, Jealousy" is indeed a cool jam

This is pretty much what I was expecting – some solid songs, some ok songs – though maybe a little restrained overall... I wish they swung for the fences a little more, and got even more enjoyably straight-faced cheesy.

(though I can apparently barely write a coherent sentence, so who am I to talk)

omfg "brutal"

yeah that's the best new track

As for the rest: the relentless of the hysteria is its own attraction.

i wish the whole thing was like "brutal"

same, it *rules*

I found this to be kind of a chore and turned it off before the end

"Traitor" and "Happier" are basically the same song, no?

I like "Favorite Crime" a lot...

Kid played me "Brutal," sounds like Elastica.

Someone sent me this, which I suppose is meant to support Murgatroid's comparison above:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB-rn6f--XY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMEiL3lLRqg

I love how teenage this record sounds.

The run from Brutal to Good 4 U is *chefs kiss* but it’s got way too many ballads at the end. They’re good ballads! But it needs more upbeat, louder tracks

Yeah, that’s kind of what I (clumsily) was trying to say

I wonder if they rushed it a bit, to capitalize on the success of Driver’s License(?) It feels a track or two short, like they could have recorded one more banger but were out of gas…

(Of course, this could also just reflect the limitations of a young artist who’s still developing her voice, etc. It was originally supposed to be an EP and they fleshed it out, which tracks with the overall feel.)

all of the above

it definitely feels a bit rushed. and as good as they are I can't picture any of the album tracks becoming hit singles

Millennials listening to Olivia Rodrigo today pic.twitter.com/3FzN5k2Qv8

— Ben Yahr (@benyahr) May 21, 2021

“Brutal” is such a jam

I’ve also come around to “Deja Vu” being a truly great song… Its lyrics are so “on the nose” that I think I didn’t give it proper credit at first, but that’s exactly what makes it work.

(It’s also really smart how the opening verse sounds like it’s the narrator talking about doing these various things with the guy herself—but then the final line of the verse twists that around, and introduces the theme of the song.)

it's the best of the singles by far imo (haven't heard rest of album yet)

It's probably just the Taylor Swift influence, but "Deja Vu" feels so Nashville in the way it lays out its metaphor, the structure of its lyrics.

"deja vu" is the best single yeah and one of the best on the album

Olivia sets a few new records: "Good 4 U" debuts at #1 on the Hot 100, making Sour the first debut album in history with two singles to debut at #1; as well as the first debut album to generate two Hot 100 #1's before the album hits the Billboard 200.

Is "good 4 u" the first song written/produced in a pop-punk format to hit #1 on the charts since, like, the 2000s?

nah 24kgoldn "mood"

Or that juice wrld song that interpolates yellowcard

2021's hottest stars actually both very cold pic.twitter.com/l5CgFFf1sK

— Caitlin Rose (@TheCaitlinRose) May 24, 2021

that song only got to #2, i think xp

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/21/998842657/olivia-rodrigo-sour-drivers-license-debut-album-review

Lowercase girls tend to fly under the radar by design, but once you start looking you'll see them everywhere. For one thing, they've been all over the streaming charts in the past few years: folklore, evermore, "thank u, next," girl in red, mxmtoon, dodie, beabadoobee, how i'm feeling now, "drivers license," "deja vu," "good 4 u" — to name just a few recent, femme-forward musical phenomena that wouldn't even think of imposing the tyranny of capital letters on the listener's imagination.

But lowercase girls have been there forever, in the back rows of classrooms and the corners of parties, daydreaming, doodling, stockpiling vivid details and observations in the marble notebooks of their minds — waiting for the precise moment to launch them like a carefully crafted dart that punctures everybody else's apathy and proves just how sharply she has been paying attention. Some of the best of them never grow out of it. ...

That was marvelous, thanks.

finally, people are seeing and appreciating the former star of two Disney TV shows

xxxxxxxxp I don't really think of "Mood" as pop-punk(?) – but I'll let 2011nostalgia be the judge

I had Mood in mind when writing that but it doesn’t go as full-on pop-punk as good 4 u does. So maybe it counts? Maybe it doesn’t? I dunno!

More records: good 4 u has bigger week on spotify globally than drivrs license or any other track

good 4 u is so excellent and I wish more of this sounded like that. Also I was surprised to see Jam City credited in the production notes!

i was a little surprised too, but he's been showing up in pop production credits a bit more lately, like he was on the (quite good) troye sivan album a few years ago, on a conan grey song (with dan nigro, like on this album), and a few other places over the last few years

weirdly i just found out he played on david byrne's american utopia too

the Dan Nigro thing is amazing too - like, how many of the most perfect songs of the past ten years can he have credits on?