Halfway through her second album, GUTS, Olivia Rodrigo describes a recurring dream in which her car’s brakes fail as she’s driving through a city. “Can’t stop at the red light, can’t swerve off the road/ It’s because my life feels so out of control”. It’s an abrupt change of pace for an artist who achieved global fame stuck at “red lights/ stop signs” on 2021’s “Drivers License”.
It’s been two years since that song made Rodrigo, then 18, the youngest person to debut atop the US Billboard 100 chart. The Disney star’s minimalist account of teenage heartbreak, suburban isolation, and stalled expectations struck a chord across the pandemic-hit globe. Its elegantly – and unexpectedly – dropped F-bomb was bang on target, seeming to explode in remote slow-motion, just as its locked-down singer watched her success erupt from her bedroom like a military drone operator. One upside of that enforced isolation, she has was that it gave her the space and confidence to complete the rest of her excellent debut album: Sour (2021).
