Olivia Rodrigo is a Rockstar!!!
A foreword from the author:
2015’s An American Girl: Grace Stirs up Success was the last installment in American Girl’s Girl of the Year movie releases that I cared about. After that, I hit middle school, and while I held on strongly to my love of AG (and quite frankly and unabashedly still do), I just didn’t really care about Lea, 2016’s addition to the line of independent, fierce, and powerful 12-year-old girls. No offense to Lea, she has a great story. Grace Thomas ranks high among my choices in GOTY girls, right there among her predecessors, Isabelle, Saige, and Mckenna. For me, Grace was a mirror of my best friend; she loved Paris and she loved to bake, which were both her and my best friend’s core and defining personality traits. Grace’s year was also the year my parents took me to the American Girl store at the Florida Mall not just to browse at the historical displays and bookcases lined with The Care and Keeping Of series, but to pick out my very own American Girl doll. My two other 18-inch dolls, Vanessa and Kelly, I treasured so much, I still do, but it was a different kind of special to get to choose the real deal. I had one picked out in my mind already: Just Like You #56. She was the cutest doll that all of my favorite AG collectors on YouTube had. I wanted to call her Poppy, the same as my favorite channel, agoverseas. So as I made my way to the Just Like You dolls, my Poppy was no where in sight. Out of stock. Being the impatient little girl I was, I picked out a different instead. My beloved Adrienne, the future sister to my sweet Vanessa and spitfire Kelly. To further make up for this devastating loss of JLY #56, my parents also let me pick out an accessory, and with a doll box and coat box in hand, I left the American Girl store with my head held high. That’s where our story begins.
I’ve been a fan of Olivia Rodrigo since she first appeared on my screen as Grace Thomas in An American Girl: Grace Stirs up Success. The blue coat she wears in the movie is still the very same coat my American Girl doll is wearing right now, as we speak. I was (and not ashamed to say it) an avid watcher of Bizaardvark, so much so that when asked whether I was “team Logan” or “team Jake,” I never hesitated to reply “well I don’t watch either of them but Jake is on Bizaardvark so I guess Jake.” I know now that was the wrong choice-frankly, neither of them are a good choice- but my point is there: I am a longtime Olivia Rodrigo fan.
Olivia Rodrigo climbed to the top of the pop industry faster than ever before seen back in 2021, when she released her debut single, driver’s license. It was inescapable, and most people didn’t want to escape it. When she followed up with deja vu and good 4 u, she’d gotten the same infectious, loved, record shattering response. By May of 2021, the SOUR singles were officially released.
With the release of her three singles off her debut album, SOUR, each song was a little bit louder than the last.
When her debut album was finally released, Olivia Rodrigo was still releasing heartbreak music. Thankfully. It was sad, it was mournful, it was poetic, it was how it felt to be a teenage girl. The first track, brutal, is literally about what it feels like being a teenage girl. Olivia was seventeen while she was writing this album. brutal is loud and honest and angry and pleading to be understood. It’s part of what cements Olivia as this perpetual teenage sweetheart that she writes about in teenage dream during the GUTS era, and it’s part of what cements Olivia as someone inspired by the pop-punk, pop-rock music of the 2000s. That, and being sued by a former Paramore member for good 4 u sounding vaguely, barely, passively similar to Misery Business. Although she was the poster child of the Taylor Swift Fan Club™ before and during her debut album run (a title she and I shared proudly), she was, and is, also known to love the likes of Avril Lavigne, No Doubt, Alanis Morrisette, and so many more. Her first concert was Weezer. Why is it a question of whether Olivia Rodrigo is a rock artist or not?
There’s no denying Olivia’s spot as a main pop girl, but there shouldn’t be any denying her a seat at the alternative tables where the likes of Avril, Meg, and Gwen have sat before her, and welcomed her. Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album, GUTS was released in 2023, and ballad of a homeschooled girl was nominated for a Grammy in a category many, many people criticized: Best Rock Song. Among the others nominated at the 2024 Grammys were The Rolling Stones and Queens of the Stone Age. Rock greats. To be voted on amongst rock greats. ballad of a homeschooled girl is by all means a rock song. It’s based on a raw emotion and storytelling, it’s got attitude and strong vocals, with stronger instruments. It’s a rock song, and a good one. A Grammy-nominated one at that. GUTS is an album where all of that is threaded through it like the seams of a messily encapsulated yet beautiful tapestry. The second of her two albums is less ballad and sad measure, as her sound becomes more personal and refined. On GUTS, Olivia’s harder, rock-influenced sounds show more emotion and depth than her ballads, which are still packed with authenticity and feeling. While SOUR was a perfectly born debut album, GUTS is a more than perfect heir, showing Olivia’s true star and how she’ll further her career and her sound. She’s a popstar.!!! and she’s a rockstar!!!!
xoxo, Willianny
