Olivia Rodrigo - The Voice of Generation Z

Olivia Rodrigo is one of the biggest pop new sensations of the early 2020s. A former Disney star, she soon began taking on the role of post-adolescent generational voice, channelling Gen Z's renewed interest in nostalgic 90s rock and reinventing chart-topping female singer-songwriting in the post-#MeToo era. Her phenomenon has grown enormously, with millions of teenagers following her devotedly, captivated by her pop/non-pop approach.

Actress and child prodigy

In recent years, numerous actresses and singers have risen to the top of the charts starting out in America's foremost entertainment industry. Male stars too have begun their careers within the Disney factory, but to a much lesser extent and with a far less resounding impact. On the female side, however, especially from the 90s onward, singers or actresses who started their careers as child prodigies have gradually made the transition to “adult” careers, achieving international success and often ending up embodying aesthetic and artistic values far removed from, if not entirely opposed to, those of the shows they starred in as children. Countless examples could be cited: Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Zendaya Coleman, Bella Thorne and so on.

Olivia Rodrigo's case, however, is (or at least appears to be, for now) a case apart, for a number of reasons. The first might seem to set her apart from her peers because of a certain “rock” bent (let's put that in quotation marks) in her music, but it would be wrong to say that, for instance, Cyrus or Lovato never let such influences seep into their work either, especially during the latter's “punk” phase. The second reason places Rodrigo and her success at the very peak of social media's influence, to which, unlike the aforementioned singers, she owes practically 100% of her fame. But there's more still to say, a combination of factors that makes young Olivia more interesting than many of her fellow artists on today's “pop” scene (this term, too, belongs in quotation marks, and we'll soon explain why).

Olivia Rodrigo, born in 2003 in California, daughter of a teacher and a therapist (so, not a “nepo baby”) of Filipino descent, grew up half-deaf in her left ear (true story) but nonetheless listening to the White Stripes (she has said that Jack White is her “hero of heroes”) and bands like Pearl Jam and Green Day. Half of her musical upbringing is thus rock, while the other half, the pop side, points to the inevitable (for a girl of her generation) Taylor Swift, Lorde and Lana Del Rey; a “third half”, let's call it that since it's more of a middle ground that has yet to fully emerge in her music, links her instead to songwriters such as Annie Clarke (St. Vincent), Alanis Morissette, Kacey Musgraves and Fiona Apple. One final note: Olivia Rodrigo has stated that she doesn't want to be “the greatest popstar who ever lived”, just a simple singer-songwriter.

The formula: pop/non-pop

A deliberate step to break away from the path of other past Disney stars and avoid ending up "another Sarah Lynn". Like her colleague and near-contemporary Billie Eilish — or rather, even more so — she navigates her sudden, unexpected fame by offering up a pop/non-pop formula that plays with the expectations and hype of her armies of social media fans, while still finding room to express her adolescent unease with an introspection unusual for the mainstream, all the while never skimping on the bitter sarcasm typical of Gen Z. The choices made throughout her still-young career, which began on record in 2021, have all pointed in this direction: from recruiting the relatively unknown producer Dan Nigro, former frontman of As Tall As Lions, as her writing and composing partner, to choosing Geffen — a label with a noble past and a keen eye for artistic results — to distribute her music.

After debuting at 13 in the Disney sitcom "Bizaardvark" — in which she plays and sings, making viral videos for a fake online platform called "Vuuugle" alongside friend and co-star Madison Hu — and finding further fame in the mockumentary "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series", Rodrigo found herself hit by incredible popularity practically overnight, when on January 8, 2021 her debut single "Drivers License" tore through Spotify (by the end of 2023 it had already reached two billion streams) and within a short time hit number one on the charts in 25 countries (number 8 in Italy). The song is a piano pop ballad in which Olivia Rodrigo expresses her frustration over a relationship gone wrong (a theme present in three quarters of her songs), lamenting how, paradoxically, it was precisely the need to see the boy she loved that pushed her to get her driver's license, just so she could drive to his house.

Nothing revolutionary, of course, but let's not forget we're in a new era: millions of very young fans discovered the singer through TikTok, YouTube and other platforms unknown to "grown-ups", and were struck by the sensitivity of the song's tone and the melancholy with which the subject is handled. "Drivers License" strikes a universal chord among teenagers, and it's worth adding that in the United States, in some states, you can get your driver's license as early as 14. More broadly, Rodrigo offers a new form of pop that wins over and connects with an entirely new generation of listeners too young to have known and appreciated other stars with a perhaps similar style who became famous earlier and through other media. Then there's the musical component: like other Gen Z artists, Rodrigo shows a strong preference for nostalgic 90s sounds, or in general for music that's far more acoustic and distorted, in sharp contrast to the artificial, digital productions of 2010s pop made by her millennial "older siblings". In this sense, she is essentially the first to reinvent pop rock for the 2020s, incorporating a drive for distinction that is, first and foremost, stylistic.

Getting a driver's license and breaking into music

There's also a whole question of attitude: in a short span of years (helped, of course, by the critical period of the pandemic), the carefree, cheerful child actress turns into an uneasy, gloomy, anxious post-teen. In the documentary "Driving Home 2 U", talking about writing the song "Enough For You", she reveals: "Being a child actress, when you're constantly told that everything you do is amazing… you've done the bare minimum and they're like: 'Oh, you're a star!'. I've always been very disillusioned by that, ever since I was little. I was like: 'They'd tell me anything [to make me happy]', so I swung to the other end of the spectrum and started thinking that everything I did was actually terrible. I started being my own critic and telling myself: 'No, you can always do better, always do better', I never accepted it when someone told me I'd done a good job". The same documentary follows her in the studio with producer Dan Nigro, on occasions where she repeatedly says she's unhappy with her ideas, her performances, and how making music makes her feel.

All of which explains why her debut album, released on May 21, 2021, could only be called Sour. A ten-track list that mainly shows the imprint of 2010s bedroom pop (the genre Gen Z grew up on) but with various nostalgic flourishes, such as the pop-punk of "Good 4 U" (which directly quotes "Misery Business" and credits Hayley Williams and Josh Farro as co-writers). But for anyone who doesn't yet know what to expect from Rodrigo, or doesn't know her at all, it's the opening track (born from a riff by Nigro) that speaks for her: a rock'n'roll number with a (neo-?) grunge flavor over which the young singer's voice spits out paranoia, insecurity and resentment breathlessly, and which has absolutely nothing to do with pop. Fittingly, it's titled "Brutal". Olivia sings: “Sono così stufa di avere 17 anni/ Dov’è il mio cazzo di sogno da teenager?/ Se qualcuno mi dice ancora una volta/ ‘Goditi la tua giovinezza’, mi metto a piangere/ E non mi faccio valere/ Sono ansiosa e niente mi aiuta/ E vorrei aver fatto questa cosa prima/ E vorrei piacere di più alla gente”. Naive expressions that might come across as self-pitying to those who've lived a little longer, but it's always a mistake to judge the feelings of a generation when you're not part of it.

Either way, on the album Olivia Rodrigo is less "brutal" than its opener promises. Many songs linger on romantic disappointments and take the form of aching ballads that explore, from her teenage perspective, every shade of heartache; Olivia does so with gentle, melancholy tones rather than anger or frustration. "Drivers License" is a good example of the album's dominant sound. It's similar to what we hear in "Deja Vu" (sic), a song that reflects on dysfunctional patterns repeating from one relationship to the next; in "1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back", a song about the difficulty of reaching a goal or improving, and the negative perception of a journey that seems never to move forward; and in "Hope Ur Ok", the closing track, in which for once the singer doesn't talk about herself but instead becomes a storyteller, narrating the stories of people she once knew and later lost touch with, hoping they're "ok". These are more or less the most interesting tracks on the album, along with "Drivers License" and of course "Brutal".

A separate case worth mentioning, though, is "Jealousy, Jealousy", one of the best songs of 2021. Markedly different in tone from the rest of the album, it stands out for its "sour" edge (in keeping with the album's title) and a certain sarcastic inflection in how the lyrics are delivered. Which, in this case, come across as particularly sharp and clever for a 17-year-old artist. As you might guess, the song is about envy and jealousy, and Olivia reflects, comparing herself to other girls and women her age: "So che la loro bellezza non è una mia mancanza/ Ma sembra che quel peso sia sulla mia schiena", and "La loro vittoria non è una mia sconfitta/ So che è vero ma non riesco a non farmici invischiare". The mental mechanisms that lead to negativity, triggered on their own and unwanted, are explored in full in the refrain: “La comparazione mi sta uccidendo lentamente/ Penso che penso troppo, a ragazze che non mi conoscono/ Sono così stanca di me stessa, preferirei essere/ Chiunque altro, la gelosia ha iniziato a seguirmi”. The music on the track is excellent, with a considerable acoustic component, bass lines worthy of an auteur record, impressive harmonies, and later a shift toward certain jazz inflections in the bridge, over which Olivia sings, again comparing herself to other girls: "I wish so much I was you, and I don't even know you / All I see is what I wish I were, happier, prettier". Lines that, again, may seem naive but effectively capture the paranoid feelings of an entire generation.

Success, crooked smiles and cynicism

However it's understood, Olivia achieves enormous success right away. The album Sour is named the best of 2021 by Rolling Stone and Billboard, while even Robert Christgau places it at number 4 on his personal list — which says a lot. The record reaches number 1 in numerous countries (number 10 in Italy), earning a staggering number of platinum certifications. At the 2022 Grammy Awards, Olivia Rodrigo wins three awards: Best New Artist, Best Pop Solo Performance for "Drivers License", and Best Pop Vocal Album for Sour. After the ceremony, one of her trophies falls to the ground and breaks in two. The singer's image gains even more popularity thanks to the concert film "Sour: Prom", set during a classic end-of-year high school prom, and to numerous provocative videos, many of them directed by Petra Collins. The singer always presents herself somewhere between ironic and melancholic, in a sensual (now fully adult) guise but also a fragile one, displaying her femininity in every shade while also expressing a certain aggressive, self-destructive streak.

A side of her personality (and therefore of her music) that comes through much more clearly on Guts, her second album, released in 2023 and again co-written with Dan Nigro. On the new record the sound is decidedly more rock, with echoes of early Avril Lavigne, of a certain breezy early-2000s pop-punk, and, in the rawness of the guitar work, of a certain grunge aesthetic that perhaps betrays the influence of contemporaries Wet Leg. There's still plenty of sarcasm, even more than before, delivered through vocals that often avoid melody and melisma, relying instead on a kind of spoken-word delivery where the words tumble over one another, as if Olivia were in a hurry to spit it all out.

The themes addressed here take on a more combative edge, with a more cynical, skeptical, less idealized view of love. This happens in "Vampire", for example, a track in which she bluntly compares her ex to a bloodsucker, declaring: "Credevo di essere furba/ Ma tu mi fai sembrare così ingenua"; in "Get Him Back!" she wants him back, though it's unclear whether to get revenge on him, because she misses him, or both: “Voglio farlo tornare, voglio ingelosirlo, voglio farlo stare male/ Voglio farlo tornare, perché di nuovo mi manca davvero e mi rende molto triste/ Voglio la mia dolce vendetta, voglio di nuovo lui”; and finally in "Bad Idea Right?" it's she who goes back to him: “Sì lo so che è il mio ex/ Ma due persone non possono riconnettersi?/ Lo vedo solo come un amico/ La più grande bugia che ho mai detto/ Sono inciampata e caduta nel suo letto”. Alongside her cynicism, then, the singer doesn't hesitate to acknowledge her own hypocrisy in matters of love, always though in an ironic, lighthearted way.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that Olivia Rodrigo's second album deals only with relationships and feelings. Among the tracks, in fact, there are also a few less adolescent, less naive themes, and some more mature, personal reflections. In "Ballad Of A Homeschooled Girl" (Rodrigo, like others of her generation — Billie Eilish, for instance — was homeschooled) she reflects on her inability to feel at ease in social settings, having never gone to school like everyone else: “Ho rotto un bicchiere, sono scivolata e caduta/ Ho detto segreti che non dovrei dire/ Sono inciampata su tutte le mie parole/ L’ho reso strano, l’ho reso peggio/ Ogni volta che esco fuori è un suicidio sociale/ Vorrei rannicchiarmi e morire”.

Even more interesting is "Pretty Isn't Pretty", the best song on the album, in which Olivia reflects on the concept of beauty in the modern era and on self-perception: “Quando bella non è bella abbastanza, che cosa fai?/ Tutte stanno al passo, quindi pensi di essere tu [il problema]/ Potrei cambiare il mio corpo e cambiare la mia faccia/ Provare ogni rossetto in ogni sfumatura/ Ma mi sentirei sempre la stessa, perché bella non è bella abbastanza in ogni caso”. This is the sincere, straightforward Olivia, who sets aside the abstract torments of teenage love to reflect on the one thing she can actually do something about: herself.

On her third album, whose title says it all, the direction stays more or less the same, but with a marked tilt toward a romantic melancholy that seems to feed on itself, uninterested in finding solutions to these endless dilemmas of love and more interested in further suffering. You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love is Olivia diving into her woes with pure sincerity; but also, impossible not to notice, with precious little to say on the matter compared to what far more "seasoned" peers like Taylor Swift have already done at length — and, above all, compared to what one would expect from an artist who is no longer the 17-year-old she was at her professional debut, but is now 23.

Musically, the album embraces an instrumental approach that often welcomes classically-tinged arrangements, as in the first celebrated single "Drop Dead", a Laufey-esque track that opens the record and largely sets its mood. The tracklist is indeed dotted with ballads that are perhaps meant to convey sincere romantic anxieties but often veer into banality – "Stupid Song", "Begged" and "Less" fall into this category. There are, however, a few nice surprises, like the atmospheric crescendo of "Purple" and the somewhat anachronistic indie rock of "My Way", the album's most rock-oriented track and perhaps its best, at least compared to the rest of the songs. "Expectations" is also worth mentioning, livelier and built on a breezy, bass-heavy rock sound that could work well at plenty of parties: in the song Olivia lists everything she no longer looks for in a man, describing her own "evolution" on the matter, though she herself seems unsure whether to take these changes ironically or not.

"Maggots For Brains" is the only song on the record to reveal a clear Cure influence – much has been made of this inspiration, which was supposedly meant to shape the album to a far greater extent – a style that is obviously reworked with all the necessary (2026) updates; it's also one of the few tracks to betray a fairly explicit existential unease ("I'm a zombie in my body/ I'm a sad shell of a woman") beyond mere romantic suffering. "U + Me = <3" tries to trace a similar feeling through its guitar work, but settles for an unremarkable pop/rock sound that recalls the early 2000s more than the new wave 80s territory of Robert Smith's band. Smith himself, however, does appear in person on a duet with Olivia on the track "What's Wrong With Me", a pairing that nonetheless disappoints and, beyond the striking generational bridge, doesn't offer much else of note, as the song is decidedly unmemorable. After all, the influence of the British alternative music and gothic rock legend on this third Olivia Rodrigo record has proven rather superficial, if not nonexistent.

Still firmly settled into her role as a generational icon, Olivia Rodrigo seems to show no musical or lyrical growth (nor personal growth, for that matter), apparently preferring to keep building soundtracks for her thousand romantic worlds, where she loves to lose herself amid tears, bitter irony and pure amorous ecstasy — when love is even there at all. But if this is all that an artist considered among the most important and famous in the world today manages to communicate, even allowing for the fact that she operates within pop, one has to wonder: will this really, truly end up being one of the most talked-about albums of 2026? And if so, does it deserve to be?

Ride the wave of great music

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