I don’t think this is going to become a regular thing on my website, but I decided to do an individual track review as I’ve never done one of those before. So, Olivia Rodrigo has a new single out, the lead single from her upcoming 2nd studio album, GUTS, the follow-up to 2021’s SOUR, an album which I think I like more than most critics … I mean, I kind of get the argument that her influences are too obvious, but taking influence from other artists is a huge part of how art is made, and personally I think Olivia is a very creative artist who clearly takes influence from Taylor Swift and Lorde but turns that influence into her own unique music, and personally I think SOUR is a legit great album that might be among my favourite albums of 2021!

I’d say going into this single my expectations were cautiously optimistic … I mean, people often talk about the ‘sophomore slump’, but considering how much I love SOUR, I still felt mostly optimistic going into this song. And I decided to give this song it’s own review before I even heard it, so after giving it multiple listens, how do I feel about it?

Well … I mostly like it, but it’s not one of her better songs in my opinion. I like the lyrics calling out an ex, and it’s got a lot of guts to it (pun intended) … but the vocal melodies in the verses feel kind of boring to me, and the vocals do sound kind of drowned out in the mix at points.

Don’t get me wrong, I do like this track, but compared to the lead single from SOUR, that being the phenomenal “drivers license” (which is probably still my favourite song on that album), I’m just not as wowed by this one. I don’t want to make this all about comparisons, though, and this track does have a really good, catchy and hard-hitting chorus, even if the post-chorus is slightly annoying to me with the huge shots of instrumentation that sound way more messy than hard-hitting.

So, overall, I’m still looking forward to the album, and maybe this will grow on me, but I’m not sure I’m going to go back to this track much. We’ll see, though.

But what do you think of this song? I’m curious to know. Again, I don’t think I’ll be regularly doing these individual track reviews, but I wanted to try it out as I’d never done that before. Anyway, I’ll be back with some album reviews soon!