Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts presents a young woman with more wide-reaching concerns than the single-minded scorned lover of 2021’s Sour. On her second studio album, the singer delves further into self-doubt, pirouetting from peer envy (“Lacy”), to the pressure of meeting society’s expectations (“Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”), to suffocating beauty standards (“Pretty Isn’t Pretty”). Some of these are more richly realized than others, but the 20-year-old Rodrigo’s attempts to expand the aperture of her worldview are admirable.
The writing on Guts teeters on the edge between the broad and the specific, a balance that’s resulted in some of the savviest and most exciting pop music. One of the album’s highlights, “Logical,” is a stinging takedown of an ex-flame, and like many of the songs here, it first appears earnest but is layered with a wounded, embittered sarcasm. The track illustrates the confusing, devastating experience of being gaslighted by someone—namely guys—and conveys the power dynamics of such relationships via Rodrigo’s mix of vocal tones.
Similarly, the guitars on the album’s eviscerating opener, “All-American Bitch,” volley between acoustic and electric, reflecting the inconsistencies that Rodrigo sees in the world all around her. Unlike the guitar work on Sour, which feels by and large decorative, the riffs on Guts are more visceral and, crucially, placed closer to the front of the mix.
The album’s lead single, “Vampire,” essentially serves as a sequel to Rodrigo’s breakthrough hit, “Drivers License,” and somehow gets within striking distance to that song’s operatic power (the way that Rodrigo’s voice falters after singing “fame fucker” is particularly poignant). The similarly piano-dominated “The Grudge,” however, veers into soapy melodrama thanks in part to Rodrigo’s most solipsistic tendencies as a storyteller: “The arguments that I’ve won against you in my head/In the shower, in the car, and in the mirror before bed.”
Despite occasional missteps like that and “Pretty Isn’t Pretty,” which feels like a risk-averse treatise on an important issue, Guts is more consistent than Rodrigo’s debut. Her writing has gotten more precise, which makes both her self-criticism and frequent barbs hurled at others land all the better. She’s also writing with a knottier, less easily resolved perspective this time around. Tracks like “Love Is Embarrassing” and “Get Him Back!” double back on themselves and have a conflicted core that reveal a slightly different attitude or emotion with each listen.
Guts is unmistakably the work of an artist still transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. The songs vacillate between knowing and puerile, mostly playing Rodrigo’s youth to its advantage but sometimes overplaying it. Tellingly, the album culminates in an interrogation of Rodrigo’s anxiety about being perceived as a child prodigy and escaping the shackles of age on the shrewd final track, “Teenage Dream.” “When am I gonna stop being great for my age and just start being good?” she wonders. It’s clear that she’s already crossed that threshold.
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