It is difficult to believe that Olivia Rodrigo is only 23. Her debut album, Sour, and its seismic lead single, “Drivers License”, was hailed as a sort of cultural reset when it was released in 2021, with angsty teen girls around the world finally finding a new queen. In the five years since, she has generated an awful lot of chatter.
She has been accused of copying an impressive selection of pop and rock legends including Courtney Love and Taylor Swift; she has been embroiled in a rumoured love triangle with her contemporary Sabrina Carpenter; and more recently she has been the subject of an impassioned online debate about the paedophilic fantasies of the patriarchy, as well as feverish speculation about her break-up with the actor Louis Partridge, presumed to be the subject of her newest songs. Oh, and last year she headlined Glastonbury. When I was 23, I was still writing lists of what I might be when I grew up and saving pennies to buy cushions from Urban Outfitters.
In some ways, the noise is justified. Compared to her peers in pop, Rodrigo is doing something that looks and sounds a bit different. Rather than leaning into a super commercial or bubblegum sound, Rodrigo is heavily inspired by 90s pop-rock and post-punk – she counts The Cure’s frontman Robert Smith among her friends and collaborators – and veers more towards a Gen Z Avril Lavigne than a pop-machine shill.
