The singer's first-ever love album turned out to be (kind of) a breakup album after all.
Olivia Ridrigo
Adrian Martin
Olivia Rodrigo‘s new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, sounds like she went through a breakup right when she had almost finished making it.
So even though it was billed as a concept record about the anxiety and malaise that can sometimes accompany falling in love, it actually feels more like a living, breathing thing, as if she’d set out to write about longterm romance but it ended up turning into something else entirely. This is not to speculate on the reports that she and her boyfriend of two years, Louis Partridge, really did split right as she was putting the finishing touches on OR3, but to remark on how different the listening experience is from expected. There is no neat bow or thesis tying everything together, the arguable hallmark of any true “concept” record. Instead, it feels like we are hearing Rodrigo attempt to process what’s happening to her in real time.
