Olivia Rodrigo released her sophomore album, “GUTS”, on Sep. 8, and the album once again put her at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Her first album, “SOUR”, was chock-full of slow breakup ballads, the most famous of which include “drivers license” and “deja vu”, but instead of filling “GUTS” with similar sounding, mournful music, the record was abundant with fun, campy, pop-punk ballads like “get him back!” and “love is embarrassing”. Rodrigo strayed away from the kind of music that made her famous in the first place, and I personally couldn’t have been happier with the decision.

I liked “SOUR” as much as the next person, but I loved the high-energy tracks like “brutal” and “good 4 u” most of all, and I was thrilled when Rodrigo leaned into that energy more in the creation of her second album. Instead of drawing on more negative energy to fuel her songwriting, she decided to play with fun riffs, upbeat melodies and battling guitars to explore her past relationships and themes like love and fitting in. Her second single, “bad idea right?” exemplifies this perfectly. Throughout the song, she maintains an internal debate on whether to get back with her ex-boyfriend and rather than making the music downtrodden and depressing like she would have done in 2021, the vibe is playful and fun instead. Throughout the album, we see this side of Rodrigo explored in a way we didn’t get to see throughout the tracklist on “SOUR”, and it made the album that much more enjoyable overall.

But even though “GUTS” boasted an admirable number of pop-punk hits, it still had a good number of slower songs – some of which I loved, like “lacy” and “teenage dream”. Other slow songs, though, dragged the album down. Those like “logical” and “making the bed” were forgettable at best, and could have easily been left off the record and not been missed. 

All in all, however, “GUTS” was a brilliant, standout album in which Rodrigo found her voice as an artist as well as delivered some of my current favorite songs.

On this blog, members of the Carmel High School chapter of the Quill and Scroll International Honorary Society for High School Journalists (and the occasional guest writer) produce curations of all facets of popular culture, from TV shows to music to novels to technology. We hope our readers always leave with something new to muse over. Click here to read more from MUSE.