Rodrigo’s debut album Sour was widely recognised as one of the hottest records of 2021, earning her a cult following and dozens of awards at just 19 years old. Her highly anticipated sophomore album GUTS is another absolute knockout, earning her five weeks in the Official Albums Chart, with all three singles appearing in the Official Singles Chart.
The record reflects on the messy and sometimes painful experience of being a young woman today, tapping into topics like mental health, self comparison, and breakups through a brutally honest, confessional lens. A perfect example of this is in the single bad idea right? in which Rodrigo sings “I only see him as a friend [...] I just tripped and fell into his bed”. The lead single, and most popular track on the album, vampire, is used as a metaphor for a mystery ex who sucks the life out of her —shown by the clever rhyming of ‘bloodsucker’ and ‘fame-fucker’.
The record reflects on the messy and sometimes painful experience of being a young woman today, tapping into topics like mental health, self comparison, and breakups.”
Rodrigo has often been known to take influence and inspiration from the artists around her, with Paramore and Taylor Swift named as influences on Sour. The album’s opening track all-american bitch refers to Joan Didion’s song of the same name, whilst also utilising a scream reminiscent of Phoebe Bridger’s ballad I Know The End—another artist with a similar, Gen-Z-based following.
Her songwriting is often akin to a diary entry, with exaggerated lines almost uncontrollably spilling out of her; for example, in ballad of a homeschooled girl, she sings “Everything I do is tragic, every guy I like is gay.” This is a testament to her songwriting ability —something which has significantly improved throughout her career. In an interview with WIRED, she details how she took a poetry class where she wrote lacy; a soft and reflective acoustic guitar ballad, contrasting the pop-punk, Riot grrrl vibe of the rest of the record. “My stomach’s all in knots / you got the one thing that I want” draws on the common shared experience of young women, the feelings of comparison and not feeling good enough. She juxtaposes this feeling later in the album with making the bed: “I got the things I wanted / it’s just not what I imagined” —perhaps an allusion to her almost overnight fame following her debut single drivers license. Following this, in the album’s closing track teenage dream, a slow piano ballad reflecting on growing older, Rodrigo cynically apologises that she “couldn’t always be your [her audience’s] teenage dream”.
GUTS feels like a developmental album: it marks the end of Rodrigo’s teenagehood and signifies the start of a new era for her as an adult. In a statement about the record, she said she had grown “10 years between the ages of 18 and 20 —it was such an intense period of awkwardness and change. I think that’s all just a natural part of growth, and hopefully, the album reflects that.”
To me, it definitely does, and this is what makes it an excellent album!