Olivia Rodrigo - Sour

A couple of weeks ago I was watching the 2021 Brit awards and one of the standout performances of the night was Olivia Rodrigo.  Prior to this I had never heard of her but the thing that drew me towards her was her sublime vocal performance and I did think I must check her out.  A few weeks later I was looking through the new releases on Spotify and noticed a track by her.  I played it and instantly began looking for more stuff by her.  I had a look at her Spotify profile to find she had only released one album which happened to have been released that day.  I then saw that one of her songs "driving license" had 750 million streams. I was a bit taken aback by this.  750 million! That is incredible for someone who has only just released her debut and it did make me think how out of touch I am having never heard of her.

So, it made me wonder how on earth could she have so many streams.  Turns out before she turned her attention to music, she was an actress appearing on some Disney series including High School musical.  She released the single "driving license" which broke various Spotify streaming records including most streams in a day ever for a non-holiday song.  So, looking at this brief blurb about her you'd think she has achieved so much with her life.  But what's more amazing is that she has done all this, and she is only 18.

"Sour" is the debut album by Olivia and starts with "brutal" which is a song which feels like it has a bit of a misleading start with some gentle strings to break you in. Before Olivia leaps into this punchy punky type of track delivering vocal after vocal with attitude.  The end of the song is gentler, and I would say sets you up more for what overall the rest of the album is like. More downbeat but there are quite a few curve balls along the way.

Now to go back to "driving licence" that song that put her on the map and has really made her an overnight sensation to everyone bar me of course lol. But I must add when I did hear this eventually it did win me over.  Strip back this song and the music behind the vocals is incredibly simple.  For most of it, it feels like the same note is being continuously being played on the piano repeatedly.  If you heard this without the vocals it would be a turn off and basically a very bland song.  But with Olivia's vocals and lyrics it transforms the song into another dimension.  It shows off her full range and the reason for the tune itself being simple is to let Rodrigo's vocals take centre stage where they belong.

"deja vu" though is where Olivia's vocals share centre stage and it's not with a guitar or piano but with the drums.  That's right there is an amazing drum loop in this song which you don't feel in the other song. It's fantastic.  The feel-good song of the album is "good for u" which has such a fun and uplifting chorus.  It does remind me of a Paramore song/song but I can't place which song at the moment.  As the album moves on the songs get more stripped back often just with an acoustic guitar to let Olivia's vocals once again shine through.

Overall, I think really that's what this album is all about: Olivia's vocal performance.  It is simply phenomenal.  While there are different types of tracks to keep things interesting to be releasing this kind of album which is as good as this at only 18 years old is some achievement.  One of Olivia's influences is Taylor Swift who of course had great success at a young age, and I don't see why Olivia can have just as successful career as Taylor's based on this debut.