Olivia Rodrigo, the diary of a young pop star on the verge of a nervous breakdown

He wasn’t even a minor when he released his first single. ‘Driving licence’ (2021), triggered it: Number one in half the western world, backing her first Grammy for her debut album ‘Sour’. olivia rodrigo Between the ages of 18 and 20 he has grown up to ten years and his age Troubles, heartbreaks, and encounters with fame This second album is out right now. ‘bravery’(“courage”), as the name suggests, shows him raising his voice, showing his fingernails, and also recently surrounded by musical instruments that seem eccentric. electric guitars.

The first hit is given by the opening theme ‘All-American bitch’, which he parodied, presenting himself as “the perfect American bitch with perfect American lips and perfect American hips”, altering the candid sequence to. rock shake of a choir Echoes of Avril Lavigne’s ‘hits’. “Bad idea isn’t it?” is a song with joker rapper grafts describing the difficulty of having a relationship with an ex. guitars in other numbers with messy ‘beats’, and ‘Ballad of a Homeschooling Girl’, which is more guitar and overarching social disturbances, including the ‘FOMO’ effect. What about ‘Take it back!’, which is a delightful mix of the first Beck and The Runaways? The bearer of a delicious text: “I want to meet your mother and tell her that your son sucks.”

in the rehearsal room

This final song begins with “one, two, three…” and the crackle of the drumsticks, and it feels like it was recorded in the same rehearsal room where the musicians of a band were playing together. The overall vibrancy that the recurring producer (and co-writer of all songs) sought Dan BlackShe’s a powerhouse with record credits from Kylie Minogue, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Caroline Polachek.

Hatred, shame and bad luck, relationships short-circuited by celebrities and reflections on the nature of success. The most precise example out there is ‘Making the bed’: “I got what I wanted but it didn’t turn out as I imagined”. Crying rich girl? He looks more like a spider, here on a ballad-roller coaster where he says he dreams every night of a car without brakes and that he feels loved like a “tourist attraction”.

Yes, the atoning ‘balladism’ shapes the other side of the coin, and we have to mention ‘Vampire’ with his ‘crescendo’ on the piano and his views on a sparse relationship, the magical arpeggios or romantic tortures of ‘Lace’. It floats around ‘Logical’ and ‘Grant’. Complementing a circle of songs that are almost instantly accessible, witty, humorous, and emotionally charged, the material can make this California Filipino ancestor well settled in the first commercial episode, born in 2003. Jordi Bianciotto

Other albums of the week

Designed as soundtrack of a movie that doesn’t exist (a spaghetti western of surreal horror!), Wirral’s new album includes 13 songs. serene beauty and a ghostly spot Echoes of the Morricone, Lee Hazelwood, and Laurel Canyon stage are wrapped in gorgeous string arrangements courtesy of Sean O’Hagan. The turbulent ‘Oceans Apart’ features a miniature by Cillian ‘Oppenheimer’ Murphy. Rafael Tapounet

The gurus of ‘big beat’, a great electronic branch that emerged in the 90s, show themselves in form in this return to parliament in the post-pandemic period. Record label reaffirmation session from the smashing opening of ‘Live Again’ (French voices) halo maud), riding on the fear of ‘weight’ and losing sight of the world, BeckIn ‘Jumping like a stone’, between sleepwalking roads and suffocating psychedelic drifts. ‘Madness’ is unbreakable. JB