{"id":731353,"date":"2026-06-12T05:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T05:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/731353\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T05:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T05:51:10","slug":"olivia-rodrigo-you-seem-pretty-sad-for-a-girl-so-in-love-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/731353\/","title":{"rendered":"Olivia Rodrigo: you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The B-side tracks the relationship\u2019s downturn. She names a song about realizing that love doesn\u2019t fix everything \u201cthe cure,\u201d and then Robert Smith himself, whom Rodrigo invited onstage for a couple of duets at her Glastonbury headlining set<\/a> last year, pops up to feature on \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with me.\u201d Over murky synths, the two singers complain about how terrible they feel post-breakup, and when they sing \u201cI can\u2019t eat\/I can\u2019t sleep\u201d together, Rodrigo and Smith\u2019s accents diverge charmingly, can\u2019t and cahn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with me\u201d lands between a pair of stripped-down tracks, the acoustic ballad \u201cbegged\u201d and the piano torch song \u201cLess.\u201d Both of these have a radiant clarity in their theses that Rodrigo has tapped into since \u201cdrivers license\u201d\u2014even in the depths of despair, she can zero in on exactly what\u2019s bothering her, whether it\u2019s how begging for affection invalidates its eventual arrival, or how getting dumped in a mature, classy way doesn\u2019t make it hurt any less. The final track, \u201ccigarette smoke,\u201d is her \u201cFake Plastic Trees<\/a>\u201d moment, acoustic strumming providing a steady backdrop for Rodrigo\u2019s survey of the split\u2019s aftermath: a quiet house, five beers in the fridge, only one car in the driveway. Does the end of a relationship nullify everything that happened before it? \u201cTell me something honest so the memories turn dark,\u201d she sings, building to a howling crescendo, then letting her voice flicker out at the end like a spent candle.<\/p>\n

Emotional transmission has always been a big tenet of the Olivia Rodrigo experience\u2014she needs us to feel everything as intensely as she does, and will use every musical trick in the book to make it happen. By the end of you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, she\u2019s dragged us through the wringer and back again. Thank God, then, for the penultimate song \u201cexpectations,\u201d a dance track that gathers all of the tension and agony of the prior songs and blows it up with some glittery dynamite. Alongside a synth line that could have been written by Mark Mothersbaugh and a goofy bridge of stern male voices plucked right from \u201cMaterial Girl<\/a>,\u201d Rodrigo puts on a minidress and a brave face and commits to upping her standards: \u201cI\u2019m not kissing any boy that is passive\/Their indecision is painfully unattractive.\u201d Even if her positivity reads as the attitude overcorrection of a newly single person\u2014\u201cNow I am secure\/I am so evolved\u201d she sings dryly on the pre-chorus\u2014the song is simply so fun that you can\u2019t help but go along with it. This is what Rodrigo does best: lures you in, overrides your doubts, then sends you on your way, grateful for the opportunity to get totally emotionally consumed. She keeps finding herself at the mercy of forces greater than her will\u2014jealousy, insecurity, lust, anger\u2014but when it comes to making music about it, she\u2019s always in control.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Olivia Rodrigo: You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The B-side tracks the relationship\u2019s downturn. She names a song about realizing that love doesn\u2019t fix everything \u201cthe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[342,49,48,361,75,343],"class_list":["post-731353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}