10 olivia rodrigo songs that mean so much to me

where would i be without you olivia??? her music is the background of my second adolescence: her whole aesthetic leaves me emotionally enriched and wanting for an artist like her in my past

news flash: i’m obsessed with olivia rodrigo! did you NOT see all this purple?

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related:

the propagation of teenage girl music as the antidote to american capitalism

olivia rodrigo for u.s. senate

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olivia rodrigo may be an artist who deliberately echoes old styles, but she represents something decisively new in how music is deployed to connect with and reflect on ourselves. her lyrics are aligned with experiences that so many in the younger generations have had: and she executes her art in a way that is raw, that is powerfully relatable. her songs cover sweeping themes with great depth:

social anxiety,
social-media induced jealousy,
sheltered upbringings,
the never-ending quest to be beautiful enough,
the way in which we create our own hellish realities when we give into our depression and anxiety without seeking help,
international romantic relationships,
the queer experience of attraction,
being unapologetically your authentic self regardless of others’ charges of inauthenticity and regardless of how our authentic selves make others feel,
and also generally the theme of just being an all-american b*tch!!!

i just fucking love olivia rodrigo!!!

but here are my 10 favorite songs: some lyrics, what they make me think, what they make me remember, what they make me feel

“ballad of a homeschooled girl”

cat got my tongue, and I don't think i get along with anyone
blood runnin' cold, i'm on the outside of the greatest inside joke
and i hate all my clothes, feels like my skin doesn't fit right over my bones
so I guess i should go, the party's done, and i'm no fun, i know, i know
i know, I know

i broke a glass, i tripped and fell, i told secrets i shouldn't tell
i stumbled over all my words, i made it weird, i made it worse
each time I step outside, it's social suicide
social suicide, wanna curl up and die, it's social suicide

in high school my friends often joked that i was sheltered: and the truth is that i was. i wasn’t allowed to read harry potter, to listen to bon jovi, to watch friends, to watch the simpsons, to watch mtv, to believe in evolution, to believe in climate change, or to believe that dinosaurs did not walk the earth with humans (at least not without consequences in this world and/or the next). my “sex talk” consisted of being asked what i’d do if a girl tried to touch my penis (“i wouldn’t let her!” “good”). at bible camp i was so confused about where babies came from that i fell into a scheme to become impregnated by having other boys tap their butts against mine (half-jokingly). my parents, youth ministers, and other important people warned that the devil was real and lurking everywhere in modern culture: i was warned to be afraid for my soul if i was influenced by nefarious cultural elements. i self-censored myself from listening to certain music if the lyrics seemed “sinful.” so yes, i was sheltered. and although i was only briefly homeschooled, i so feel the awkwardness she describes!

but two lines really resonate with me in particular:

“and i hate all my clothes, feels like my skin doesn't fit right over my bones / so i guess i should go, the party's done, and i'm no fun, i know, i know”

that sense of hating my clothes, feeling unright in myself, feeling like i need to go hide somewhere rather than reveal myself: these feelings came from a double-edged sword of social awkardness. on the one hand was my sense of unease with my assigned and enforced gender, an unease i could not even articulate or openly process in a safe way, and on the other hand: a sheltered evangelical background that left me clueless about basic conversational topics and hesitant to participate in jokes that seemed sinful. and if i did participate in jokes, i was often just pretending to laugh

there are so many stretches of my life where this lyric just resonates so hard:

“each time I step outside it’s social suicide / don’t let me out at night  

“pretty isn’t pretty”

bought a bunch of makeup, tryna cover up my face
i started to skip lunch, stopped eating cake on birthdays
bought a new prescription to try and stay calm
'cause there's always something missing
there's always something in the mirror that I think looks wrong

when pretty isn't pretty enough, what do you do?
and everybody's keeping it up, so you think it's you
i could change up my body and change up my face
i could try every lipstick in every shade
but I'd always feel the same
'cause pretty isn't pretty enough anyway

this song makes me remember so many feelings i had growing up about my body. i was disgusted by my hair, which in elementary and middle school was infested with disgusting white stuff that i was repeatedly blamed for (my parents believed i was building up dandruff from not washing my hair right: turns out it was a fungal infection, which we finally found out from a dermatologist). i felt like i was fat; i hated the way my clothes fit; i hated the fear i had of doing anything about this

i guess my relationship with this song is like, the opposite of the song in a way? as in: olivia is singing about everything she actively does or could do to try and be pretty - change her body, change her face, try new lipstick, etc etc - but she is acknowledging the pain of knowing none of this will ever be enough. i felt that sense that i would never be pretty enough, but i never even had any hope of trying to be pretty enough

by the end of high school i was too scared to wear swim suits. i felt too fat. i felt so uncomfortable with my body and the clothes that were covering it: i knew i could look better but i didn’t know how, since i was psychologically trapped inside a strictly masculine model of fashion while vaguely wanting something different without allowing myself to explore just what that something different was. all i could do was meekly accept my sense of my own hideousness. but despite all those regrets, “pretty isn’t pretty” reminds me of just how stressful it would have been to grow up as a girl striving after that never-ending objective: pretty enough

also: A+ for the open mention of a prescription: but my zoloft dose increases weren’t enough to deal with the internal agony of not being myself

“making the bed”

well, sometimes i feel like I don't wanna be where i am
gettin' drunk at a club with my fair weather friends
push away all the people who know me the best
but it's me who's been making the bed

i'm so tired of bein' the girl that i am
every good thing has turned into something i dread
and i'm playin' the victim so well in my head
but it's me who's been making the bed

i’ve spent a lot of time in my life complaining about how i “don’t have friends.” now listen: i actually do have a lot of friends, but most of them live nowhere near me. it’s somehow easier to maintain those friendships than it has been with the people in my vicinity: my social anxiety has often caused me to avoid these people and push them away, even though many of them have deeply loved me: i have simply been too afraid to spend time with them, too afraid to reach out and arrange something.

it’s easy to feel like a victim when we are in that depressed and self-isolating state. but when we wake up one day and the people who loved us best have stopped inviting us to hang out, who’s fault is that, really? not totally ours: but not theirs either

why is it that we sometimes avoid or push away the people who know us best? why opt to spend more time with those who know us least, those “fair weather friends” who would reject us the moment we acted like our true selves? sometimes i think it’s precisely because these closer friends really know us: that’s what makes them so scary! because even as we have those people who really know and love us for our true authentic selves, our lives are nevertheless still intertwined with others who love us for some imaginary version of us which they have constructed in their heads, and they do not want us to leave the script. we comply with that script: because we crave the approval of these people who would never accept us for ourselves, and so we fear the consequences of being ourselves

we love to spend time with these close friends who truly know us, but we are also afraid to embrace what they love about us: because if we do, there are others who might deny our authenticity or reject us. we fear our friends because we fear ourselves. or at least I think i’ve felt that way sometimes!!! yeah, not healthy!

“so american”

and he laughs at all my jokes
and he says I'm so american
oh, god, it's just not fair of him
to make me feel this much
i'd go anywhere he goes
and he says i'm so american
oh, god, i'm gonna marry him
if he keeps this shit up
i might just be in lo-lo-, lo-lo-, lo-lo-, lo-lo-lo-lo-love

as someone who was once entwined in a few unstable transatlantic romances with european girls, i can definitely just so relate to this sense of being identified with that emphasis on your national identity as an explanation of everything: good or bad. I’ve both enjoyed being called “so american” and hated being called “so american.” but either way i’ve been called that many times: i’ve felt ashamed of being labeled american and i’ve felt good about being labeled american and i’ve felt indifferent about the label too, but i love this song for all of it: the whole song is just so american

also i just love this line:

he’s like a poem i wish i wrote

“jealousy, jealousy”

i kinda wanna throw my phone across the room
'cause all I see are girls too good to be true
with paper-white teeth and perfect bodies
wish I didn't care

i know their beauty's not my lack
but it feels like that weight is on my back
and I can't let it go

co-comparison is killing me slowly
i think, I think too much
'bout kids who don't know me
i'm so sick of myself
i'd rather be, rather be
anyone, anyone else

this song once convinced me that social media was complete trash and the only outcome of using it was a chronic sense of social anxiety and low self-esteem. who hasn’t scrolled through their newsfeeds on a lonely night just to end up feeling even more shitty about themselves for having such a boring life; for not looking a certain way; for not possessing certain things? olivia rodrigo truly captures that feeling

but the complicated thing about a sense of jealousy is that what we initially call jealousy can also be harnessed into a positive force if we assess why it is we are jealous. i am truly grateful to so many of my friends whose posts have often left me feeling jealous: those painful glimpses into their lives were also glimpses of new possibilities for myself, and i’d never have gotten in touch with my true authentic self absent the internet and the connections which social media has brought into and kept inside my life

even so: the pain in “jealousy, jealousy” is real, and most of this jealousy is jealousy felt toward misrepresentations and small snippets of otherwise mundane lives. is that anxiety worth the benefit of how social media opens windows into new worlds we make take on for ourselves? i know it’s more complicated than that. i know i’ve struggled to find a balance: i’m always banning myself from social media, then going back. even so, there’s a reason beyond addiction that i go back: it’s to be influenced. i mean, i always joke with my friend jess that she’s an influencer: but actually!

“lacy”

lacy, oh, lacy, skin like puff pastry
aren't you the sweetest thing on this side of hell?
dear angel lacy, eyes white as daisies
did i ever tell you that I'm not doing well?

ooh, i care, i care, i care
like perfume that you wear
i linger all the time
watchin', hidden in plain sight
ooh, I try, I try, I try
but it takes over my life
i see you everywhere
the sweetest torture one could bear

this song encapsulates how i’ve felt about many different girls in my “youth.” in the absence of language to understand that i was seeking to emulate them, that their presence made me insecure about myself because I was not them, i looked at them and felt an enormous sense of attraction to nearly all of them. i can’t even count the crushes i was “in love with” and would “die for” as a 6th and 7th grader

i was very dramatic, but then i was full of drama: girls obsessed me, made me hate myself, made me want things i couldn’t have but they did, made me fall in love with their very presence, made me want to be around them and build friendships with them and soak them up. i never stopped gravitating toward girls for friendships, even if these generated confusing feelings so long as i believed that i was a cishet man untuned to gender discourse. i was in love with every girl i met: but i didn’t have a refined capacity for breaking down the concept of “love” into more specific (and forbidden) manifestations

but it’s the last line that truly captures the guilt we learn to have for these thoughts and desires:

yeah, i despise my rotten mind and how much it worships you

“girl I’ve always been”

well, I have captors I call friends
i got panic rooms inside my head
and I get down with crooked men
but I am the girl i've always been
i got wrapped up in the game again
and you woke up in an empty bed
and I can't say i'm a perfect ten
but I am the girl i've always been

so don't say that i've been actin' different
i'm nothin' if i'm not consistent
you knew everything you'd be gettin'
i told you right from the beginnin'
now you're on my case, how could i go?
you never dreamed i'd be so cold
and then, with venom on your tongue
you ask me who i have become

i just love listening to this song when i get angry texts or communications from people after coming out. all i can say to these people: i am the girl i’ve always been: maybe you were confused at first, but if by now you still can’t see that this is me, then maybe you never really saw me? 🤷‍♀️

“brutal”

and I'm so sick of 17
where's my fucking teenage dream?
if someone tells me one more time
"enjoy your youth, " I'm gonna cry
and I don't stick up for myself
i'm anxious and nothing can help
and I wish I'd done this before
and I wish people liked me more

all I did was try my best
this the kind of thanks I get?
unrelentlessly upset (ah, ah, ah)
they say these are the golden years
but I wish I could disappear
ego crush is so severe
god, it's brutal out here

so many little lines in this just capture the way I thought about myself during my most depressed days of college. i love how she captures that tension between feeling like this is supposed to be the best time of your life (“your golden years”) on the one hand and then juxtaposes it with the cruel realities of adolescence, depression, social anxiety, an d feelings of inadequacy that dominate many of us during those years. brutal is a masterpiece of relatable angst; also it’s great to rock out to

“teenage dream”

i'll blow out the candles, happy birthday to me
got your whole life ahead of you, you're only 19
but i fear that they already got all the best parts of me
and i'm sorry that I couldn't always be your teenage dream

……

they all say that it gets better, it gets better the more you grow
yeah, they all say that it gets better, it gets better, but what if I don't?

there’s something so incredibly relatable about that last line, whether we can relate to the rest of the song or not: they do tell us that it gets better the more that we grow, but does it? some say the opposite. some tell us to enjoy our “youth” while we can because the rest of our lives will be full of shitty responsibilities. at least that’s what a lot of adults told me when they saw me enjoying myself

but i remember being 19 and suicidally depressed despite the fact that for some people in my life, i was an amazing person. i remember talking to one of my closest friends: she told me i would come out of this, she told me i would get better. that was difficult to believe. luckily, i eventually did get better, but it would’ve been easy not to

“all-american bitch”

i don't get angry when I'm pissed
i'm the eternal optimist
i scream inside to deal with it
like, "Ah"
like, "Ah" (oh my fucking God)

all the time
i'm grateful all the time
i'm sexy and I'm kind
i'm pretty when I cry
oh, all the time
i'm grateful all the fucking time
i'm sexy and i'm kind
i'm pretty when i cry

this song just does such a perfect job capturing the tension between feeling the external need to be friendly, optimistic, happy, kind, grateful; to comply with external expectations of decore; but inside there is a screaming, there is a pain that we are not allowed to express without undermining others’ expectations

yet there are so many other layers to this song. there’s the extreme confidence of the chorus. There’s an unapologetic tone, a refusal to be anyone but herself and to have others deal with her perfect all-american b*tchness, but there’s also a sense that she’s holding something back, she’s screaming inside, she’s not actually being herself, and she is angry and bitter about this, rightfully so

what i love about the lyrics and feeling in this song is how they are constantly contradicted by something opposite. i never know quite what i’m feeling or where my mind is going when i listen to this song, and i love that: it means each time i listen, there’s a slightly different vibe

(the all american b*tch herself!!!! source)

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