Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR

Pitchfork 70

Read Olivia Horn’s review of the album.

The Guardian 0

(Geffen)
The 18-year-old songwriter makes good on her record-breaking debut single with a first album that metabolises anger, jealousy and bewilderment into pop euphoria

Even in a world where streaming’s rise means chart records are broken all the time, the debut single by Disney star Olivia Rodrigo is an anomaly. Upon the release of Drivers License in January, it had the biggest first week for any song ever on Spotify – then hit the 100m streams mark faster than any other track on the platform had before. It debuted at No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for eight weeks – only the seventh song ever to do so. In the UK, it topped the charts for nine weeks and broke the record for the highest single-day streams ever for a non-Christmas song.

Related: 'We have to nurture each other': how Olivia Rodrigo and Gen Z reinvented the power ballad

The Guardian 0

(Universal)
The record-breaking 18-year-old follows her smash hit Drivers License with an impressive debut album of pop-punk screamers and delicate balladry

Keen not to be defined by January’s record-breaking ballad Drivers License, 18-year-old Disney-actor-turned-singer Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album opens with a surprise. “I want it to be, like, messy,” she blurts at the start of Brutal, a galloping, guitar-drenched pop-punk screamer in which the star of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series rages about problems at work (“who am I if not exploited?”) and on the road (“I can’t even parallel park”). Track two, Traitor, mirrors that song’s anger (“you betrayed me”, she sings, as if swallowing her emotions) but drops the tempo, encasing it in warm organ and delicate acoustic guitar.

Sonically, this opening salvo sets the dual moods for an assured debut, with ripe teenage emotions bubbling beneath both frantic early-00s Avril Lavigne cosplay (the pogoing, smeared mascara anthem Good 4 U) and, on the spectral Enough for You, delicate balladry that makes good use of Rodrigo’s Taylor Swift-esque lyrical precision. Somewhere in between lies the excellent Deja Vu, a lyrically astute kiss-off that recalls Lorde via whispered vocals and blown-out electronics.