Olivia Rodrigo’s “Love Album” Gets an Unexpected Plot Twist: Critic’s Take

Olivia Rodrigo ‘s new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love , sounds like she went through a breakup right when she had almost finished making it.

So even though it was billed as a concept record about the anxiety and malaise that can sometimes accompany falling in love, it actually feels more like a living, breathing thing, as if she’d set out to write about longterm romance but it ended up turning into something else entirely. This is not to speculate on the reports that she and her boyfriend of two years, Louis Partridge, really did split right as she was putting the finishing touches on OR3, but to remark on how different the listening experience is from expected. There is no neat bow or thesis tying everything together, the arguable hallmark of any true “concept” record. Instead, it feels like we are hearing Rodrigo attempt to process what’s happening to her in real time.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because this quality is exactly what made Rodrigo’s Billboard 200 -topping 2021 debut album Sour so great. But even her phenomenal first LP is different (beyond the fact that it centered on angsty teen heartbreak rather than a mature romance, as Rodrigo has characterized the subject matter of her third full-length) in that it very much began in the immediate aftermath of a breakup, rather than there being a breakup that takes place midway through and challenges the whole identity of the project as its being made.

Yet, that is You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love ‘s secret weapon. The result is a visceral simulation of what it’s really like to slowly become conscious of all the things that are bad in a relationship that otherwise feels so good — or at the very least, comfortable — but still feeling blindsided, and even a bit angry, when it comes to an end.

Part of that bait and switch is made possible by the fact that You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love includes way more joyous, no-catch love anthems than Rodrigo had previously let on when she told British Vogue that the record was full of “sad love songs,” as all of her “favorite romantic love songs [are] beautiful because they had a tinge of fear or yearning.”

“U + Me = <3” is the sonic equivalent of a gripping coming-of-age summer rom com, while “Stupid Song” is charged with momentum as Rodrigo laments that she feels so intensely in love, no lyric can do it justice. Even “Honeybee” finds her at a point where she’s unquestionably smitten with and committed to her partner, although its haunting arrangement and ghostly choral break points to a preemptive awareness of how fragile the relationship really is.

The songs that are more blatantly laced with the worry and moodiness of a natural over-thinker are also clearly written from the perspective of someone who fully expected the relationship to last, and who was willing to do whatever it took to make that happen. Those tracks — the type that Rodrigo had promised would be the meat of You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love — make it all the more surprising when, at the very end, “Less” and “Cigarette Smoke” confirm that, yes, this is a breakup album (of sorts) after all. The revelation seems to have taken even the narrator off guard.

It makes for an intriguing, dynamic listen, the only drawback being that the apparent breakup seems to have happened too late in the process for Rodrigo to be able to fully reckon with it on this record. On earlier songs like “The Cure” and “Begged,” listeners are led to believe that the main issues in the relationship at hand came primarily from Rodrigo’s own insecurities, paranoia and desire for more attentiveness on her partner’s part — which is probably how it felt to her at the time, to be fair. The simmering “Cigarette Smoke” is our only indication that Rodrigo places actual blame on that same partner — “I regret you and what I let slide/ I resent you for taking her side,” she sings without elaboration — but by that point, we’re at the end of the tracklist, leaving these revelations feeling slightly like loose ends from a narrative standpoint.

Sonically, though, Rodrigo is more intentional than ever. Working again with longtime collaborator Dan Nigro, she embraces bigger melodic risks and leans into more ambitious and unexpected arrangements, at one point taking a whimsical, 1980s-esque detour on “Expectations.” The pair have reached a new level of collaborative chemistry together, with “Stupid Song,” “Maggots for Brains” and “My Way” encompassing all of the same grandeur as “Drivers License,” but with vastly more dimension. There’s still a good balance as well between those louder moments and softer tunes like “Less” and “What’s Wrong With Me,” Rodrigo’s ruminating collaboration with Robert Smith.

Overall, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love marks an incredible third effort for Rodrigo, who, with nothing left to prove after Sour and Guts , seems refreshingly eager to expand the bounds of her own artistry. The biggest of these feats, though, might just be how — for a songwriter who’s always had such control over the way she tells stories — she seems to have surrendered herself to the way this one unfolded on its own.

When you go back and examine all of the warning signs that pop up throughout the album’s arc, it seems obvious that heartbreak was where we were headed all along. But that’s how all good plot twists work — and what is a breakup anyway, if not a plot twist?

_Originally reported by [Billboard](https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/olivia-rodrigo-you-seem-pretty-sad-girl-love-album-review-1236270563/)._