Olivia Rodrigo has been very successful in the music industry as of late. With the success of her first album, Sour, and now her second and most recent album, GUTS, it is no surprise that Rodrigo is making an impact in the industry. Last week, the artist released five additional songs to GUTS and the additional tracks were interesting, to say the least.
One of the first songs featured is “obsessed” which is very on theme with GUTS. The song is upbeat and is very catchy, similar to “bad idea right?” and “get him back!”. I really enjoyed how upbeat and fast the lyrics were, especially how easily the words flowed with one another. The build-up of the guitar to the chorus had the perfect amount of momentum, creating such an iconic and great track. While this song is mainly fun and not as serious as the other tracks, it definitely adds great substance to the album. “obsessed” was a great addition to the album and it was a personal favorite out of the five showcased.
The next track featured on the album is “girl i’ve always been” which definitely takes a 180 degree from the vibe of the album switching to country. Personally, country is not my first choice of music to listen to, but this song made me rethink my distaste. Short and sweet, “girl i’ve always been” was a sweet guitar song about her staying true to herself despite how people act around her. Rodrigo really knows her way around a guitar and this song proves that. While I still think that this song is a weird addition to a primarily upbeat and rock album, I still thought it was very interesting how Rodrigo is experimenting with new genres.
The third track on the album, “scared of my guitar”, reminded me of her previous album, Sour, along with “stranger”, which is the following track. “scared of my guitar” has the same soft and mellow vibe that a lot of the tracks on Sour shares, such as “favorite crime” and “1 step forward and 3 steps back”. Another song featuring Rodrigo’s guitar skills is about how Rodrigo gets stressful and confused thoughts about her music. I thought this song was a fairly decent addition to the added tracks, but definitely not my favorite. I thought it was mediocre and didn’t really interest me as much as it should. The vocals were great as well as the instrumentals but overall I thought it was one of the weaker links of the album.
Second to last, “stranger”, as previously mentioned, is a track that is very reminiscent of Sour. My reasoning is due to the subject matter of the song being about a breakup. Rodrigo sings about leaving her previous relationship behind her and accepting that they are now strangers. I really enjoyed the lyrics and thought the song was very on-brand for Rodrigo’s current and past work. Overall, the song can be easily related to and has a certain somber and bittersweet undertone of the song. “stranger” is a great song and one of my favorites of the added tracks.
Finally, the last added track to GUTS is “so american” which also completely switches gears from the previous song, “stranger”. This song is a romantic rock song that is probably my second favorite next to “obsessed”. One of the reasons I enjoyed this song was how it fit in so well with the album. The majority of the other added songs felt more out of place and didn’t really grasp the vibe of GUTS. This song is upbeat, fun, and has catchy lyrics, similar to “obsessed”. The song focuses more on Rodrigo’s personal love life with alleged actor Louis Partridge, implying the fun comments of him allegedly poking fun at her being American. This song was very entertaining to listen to and is right up next to “obsessed” as one of my favorite tracks featured.
Overall, I thought that GUTS (spilled) had a variety of different songs with different genres and meanings. I thought it was interesting to focus on different genres but that doesn’t mean it worked entirely. If Rodrigo wanted to go down the path of country, I would be interested to see a country album from her in the future but I don’t want to see random country songs in rock albums.
