ItвЂ™s nice to go back and see what I was feeling, and be like, вЂIt all turned out all right. I felt all those things, and they're still very real, but I'm definitely not going through that as acutely as I used to. вЂњI called the record SOUR because it was this really sour period of my life-I remember being so sad, and so insecure, and so angry. вЂњAll the feelings that I was feeling were so intense,вЂќ Rodrigo says. It has the sound and feel of an instant classic, a Jagged Little Pill for Gen Z. Anchored by the now-ubiquitous breakup ballad вЂdrivers licenseвЂ™-an often harrowing, closely studied lead single that already felt like a lock for song-of-the-year honors the second it arrived in January 2021- SOUR combines the personal and universal to often devastating effect, folding diary-like candor and autobiographical detail into performances that recall the millennial pop of Taylor Swift (вЂњfavorite crimeвЂќ) just as readily as the вЂ™90s alt-rock of Elastica (вЂњbrutalвЂќ) and Alanis Morissette (вЂњgood 4 uвЂќ). To listen to RodrigoвЂ™s debut full-length is to know-on a very deep and almost uncomfortably familiar level-exactly what she was going through when she wrote it at 17. I feel like a song is so much more special when you can visualize and picture it, even smell and taste all of the stuff that the songwriter's going through.вЂќ вЂњAnd I think itвЂ™s so impactful and emotional because of how specific it is, how it really paints pictures of scenarios.

вЂњI grew up listening to country music,вЂќ the California-born singer-songwriter (also an experienced actor and current star of Disney+вЂ™s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series) tells Apple Music. The heartbreak, the humiliation, the vertiginous weight of every lonesome thought and outsized feeling-none of that really leaves us, and exploring it honestly almost always makes for good pop songs. If Olivia Rodrigo has a superpower, itвЂ™s that, at 18, she already understands that adolescence spares no one.

Sour album