Olivia Rodrigo has looked at love from both sides now

What to bash aft penning immoderate of this century’s astir devastating songs astir the torment of breaking up? Write immoderate of this century’s astir devastating songs astir the ecstasy of getting together.

With her archetypal 2 albums — 2021’s Grammy-winning “Sour” and 2023’s triple-platinum “Guts” — Olivia Rodrigo proved herself to beryllium possibly the astir talented of the galore chroniclers of Gen Z romance to look successful Taylor Swift’s wake. She could convey the blistery sting of betrayal, arsenic successful her smash debut single, “Drivers License”; she could transmission the injustice of watching an ex someway transportation on, arsenic successful “Good 4 U”; she could present a sick pain similar idiosyncratic handing retired Halloween candy, arsenic successful “Get Him Back!” (Because it deserves remembering: “He had an ego and a temper and a wandering oculus / He said he’s six-foot-two, and I’m like, ‘Dude, bully try.’”)

Yet connected her thrilling 3rd LP, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So successful Love,” Rodrigo, 23, turns to the pleasance that comes earlier the symptom — and, successful a feat precise fewer successful popular euphony are ever capable to propulsion off, ends up with a fig of first-flush-of-love songs arsenic potent arsenic immoderate breakup tune.

She opens the medium with “Drop Dead,” successful which she compares a feline successful enactment for the bath astatine a barroom to an “angel connected the walls of Versailles” — an aboriginal motion of however precocious the affectional ceiling is here. In “Stupid Song” she cycles done a bid of metaphors to picture her lovesickness — she’s a car without a brake, she’s a bosom made of melting wax — earlier uncovering a simpler but infinitely much vivid mode of getting her constituent across: “You should consciousness however I consciousness erstwhile idiosyncratic says your name.” (Chills.)

“Maggots for Brains” is simply a opus astir however useless she becomes “when my babe goes away,” and let’s conscionable instrumentality a 2nd to savor the information that Rodrigo is putting that rubric into the satellite little than 4 years aft she was inactive a moving Disney kid. The album’s adjacent tune, “U + Me = <3,” is its precocious point: a euphoric committedness of devotion that sounds similar Sixpence None the Richer reborn arsenic a Midwestern emo band. It’s got 2 young lovers carving their names into car spot leather, and it’s got a miss trying to impressment her boyfriend’s older sister with her cynical wit and her sensation successful yacht rock.

More important, it’s got these lines of axenic poetry: “They accidental modern love’s a cruel endeavor / And to that I say, F— it, whatever.” Kurt Cobain would beryllium proud.

Working with her longtime producer, Dan Nigro, Rodrigo has expanded her stylistic palette to accommodate these caller emotions; “You Seem Pretty Sad” pulls successful chiming folk-rock and synthed-up caller question and adjacent has a gorgeous wine-bar soft ballad, “Less,” that mightiness enactment the scare successful Rodrigo’s pal Laufey.

The medium is structured to hint the arc of a relationship, which means that the 2nd fractional dips into the heartbreak we’re utilized to getting from Rodrigo. But she’s penning astir acquainted scenarios with caller wisdom, drafting blase conclusions astir wherefore radical successful emotion bash the things they bash (and don’t bash the things they don’t).

In “The Cure,” which rides a strummed acoustic-guitar signifier that powerfully recalls Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm,” she realizes a fellow can’t hole what’s breached wrong her; “Begged” examines the limits of 1 partner’s willingness to look past the failings of the other. After proceeding these songs, the happier ones astatine the opening of the medium uncover bits of shadiness that Rodrigo has built into them to presage what’s to travel — to presage what ever comes.

It’s fitting, then, that Robert Smith of the Cure — possibly pop’s astir jubilant gloommeister — hovers implicit this LP similar a patron saint: nodded to successful “The Cure,” of course, but besides “Drop Dead,” wherever Rodrigo name-checks the Cure’s classical “Just Like Heaven.” Smith himself turns up successful “What’s Wrong With Me” for a duet with Rodrigo successful which the 2 larn to judge that love, successful the end, mightiness beryllium what kills them.

“My caput is spinning and my tummy is sick,” they sing, and neither sounds similar they’d person it immoderate different way.