Olivia Rodrigo’s newest album, ‘you seem so sad for a girl so in love,’ has hit well over three hundred million streams. With “Drop Dead” and its whimsical setting, listeners on TikTok thought that the rest of the album would be upbeat and happy.
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But most of the songs in the release turned out to be about love laced with anxiety and discontent. The reactions of those who’ve listened to the album were priceless. Many social media users were reportedly crying by the end of it.
“I completely understand why Olivia Rodrigo’s producers told her to name this album ‘you seem so sad for a girl so in love.’ Girl, none of these happy songs are happy,” said musician Zay Dante (@zayydante) on TikTok. He briefly reviewed the album on TikTok and said that the album was “the most depressing s*** I ever heard.”
“Imagine you’re working with someone, and they come in like, ‘Hey! I wrote a love song, and it’s called ‘Maggots for Brains,'” he said, referencing one of the songs in the album.
“Even from a marketing standpoint, what the hell are we supposed to do with that?” Dante added. In ‘Maggots for Brains,’ Rodrigo sings about being unhealthily consumed by love. When her significant other isn’t around, she feels as though she’s wasting away. She gets “maggots for brains” because all she can think of is her significant other. It isn’t just obsession but unhealthy codependency. Writing about the latter emotion is no easy feat without making it sound like the former, and many seem to acknowledge Rodrigo’s lyrical genius.
“With that being said, give her album of the year. Ship the Grammy to her house this instant,” Dante said. Despite the recent release’s heartbreaking and somber tone, Dante was a fan, calling Rodrigo’s music “generational.”
TikTok feels Olivia Rodrigo’s heartbreak like it’s theirs
“She had me crying at 2 a.m. like it was my breakup,” he said. Dante wasn’t alone in feeling the heartbreak Rodrigo was conveying in her album. Another content creator was listening to one of the songs on TikTok and started crying herself.
“Album of the year,” another TikTok user said, filming her reaction as her knees gave in.
“It felt like I was the one who got dumped by Louis Partridge,” someone else said. They referenced Rodrigo’s past relationship with the actor.
“I can literally feel her anxiety in Stupid Song,” another social media user said, talking about ‘Stupid Song.’ Many love songs would reference excitement over a crush or a new relationship. But Rodrigo, in ‘Stupid Song,’ describes honest love as “a cage that makes you feel free.” Then, she sings about overthinking everything all because she’s in love.
It was meant to be complicated
“Drop Dead was the only happy [song]. She lured us in with that and then slapped us in the face with the most heartbreaking shit ever,” a TikTok user commented. Many agreed with this sentiment—happiness is hard to come by in the album.
“No, I turned on Honeybee, and I was like, this is the HAPPY half?” someone wrote. Some even allege that Rodrigo views it as a ‘wedding’ song.
But Rodrigo said in a New York Times interview that when she was writing ‘Honeybee,’ she thought that she was able to express emotions that were “hard to describe.”
“And in the context of the album, I find it to be actually the saddest song on the album. I find it to actually be devastating,” Rodrigo explained. While the lyrics are hopeful, there are lines of self-deprecation and fear laced into the song. It’s a perfect fit for the album with a title that implies a complicated feeling. Despite many feeling gutted by Rodrigo’s music, fans believe that her latest work deserves all the awards it can get.
(featured images: zayydante, itscelesthiel, sagethomass)
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