“Waiting for the telephone to ring / And I’m wondering where she’s been / And I’m crying for yesterday / And the tap drips / Drip, drip, drip, drip”

Such were the joyless ramblings of Robert Smith, the frontman and vocalist of legendary post-punk band The Cure. These lyrics are from the opening song called ‘10:15 Saturday Night’, on their debut 1979 album, Three Imaginary Boys. While the subject of these lyrics is up for interpretation, this same frustration — the persistent wait for excitement amidst fading youth, trying to find it in a lover, the fatal boredom — is captured in its full spectrum on pop spectacle Olivia Rodrigo’s latest outing, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.

Smith, 67, makes an appearance on the song, ‘what’s wrong with me’, and fits right into the meticulously pieced-together narrative of Rodrigo’s third studio album. The concept album follows a young woman experiencing a long-term relationship for the first time, feeling neck deep in love with her partner, to the point of malfunctioning when he is not with her. 

The first seven tracks, starting with the smash lead single, ‘drop dead’, form the “girl so in love” section of the record. They chart new emotional territory for Rodrigo, whose thunderous musical debut was ignited by ‘drivers license’, a piano-driven ballad about a 17-year-old missing an ex-lover through life’s milestones. Her first song ever went straight to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts on the first week it dropped. 

These new love songs have a shiny quality that her discography felt incomplete without; if her mission statement as an artist is to amalgamate the experience of youth’s loneliness, it is only fair that love’s delusions of grandeur are included. The song ‘drop dead’ explodes into a guitar riff mimicking dancing around your bedroom when you think you have met the person who will make the rest of your life feel as magical.

It leads into ‘stupid song’, where Rodrigo delivers an exceptional vocal performance. Like every Rodrigo effort, this single feels Swiftian in its carelessly obsessive lyrics (‘and if there is a God / He’s the bond that’s between us two’). 

In an interview leading up to this release, Rodrigo told The New York Times that she wanted to mine as much depression as she could out of love songs. The anxiety that this romance might not last persists throughout even the sweetest parts of this record. ‘Honeybee’ is a rare moment without sonic calamity — a string-laced tune about hoping someone stays in your life forever. ‘Here’s to hoping,’ she whispers in a trembling voice. 

The album is a constant fight between trying to stay content and naturally staying depressed. The swooning explosive love rush on ‘stupid song’ is randomly interrupted by a line like “Seven nights alone, and a skipped meal/ I’m sleeping in my dress and my high heels”. 

This idea of chaos interpreted as butterflies is fleshed out on album highlight ‘maggots for brains’. Dan Nigro, Rodrigo’s go-to producer, has concocted riffs and mixing for this song that are somehow a combination of a-Ha, The Strokes, Taylor Swift, and to some extent, Olivia Rodrigo. 

The record is filled with isms of the artists she is clearly inspired by. While there is some merit to wearing your inspirations on your sleeve, it makes the listening experience similar to that of déjà vu, which is ironically the title of her second ever single released in 2021. This déjà vu harkens the best moments of other artists’ careers, which leads to an awkward listening experience when she occasionally lines up a dud in the track list; perhaps a duller Taylor Swift line that could have used one more round of polishing.

‘Maggots for brains’ is certainly not one of those duds. The track reflects on co-dependency very subtly. She spends her verses describing mundane days of zero productivity, and feeling like a dirty, rotten, “sad shell of a woman” when her beau goes away. Nothing else is worth her time anymore (“What can I do/ but think of you?”). 

She also deals with an obsessive ex who preys on her lover in ‘my way’, a flat and hardly inventive take on the classic girl-on-girl violent rock banger, done better by her greats such as Taylor Swift in ‘Better Than Revenge’ and pop-punk legends Paramore in ‘Misery Business’ (So, where’d you get that confidence from?/ Last time that I checked, I won). All’s funny in love and poetry, as her sweet romance is detailed in surf rock banger ‘u+me = <3’, and the first verses of ‘purple’, an undeniable turning point.

The song’s synths keep accidentally slipping to the minor key as she sings about how her “blue” worldview mixes with her lover’s “red” and melts into a purple. She speaks of the sweetness of toothbrushes, coats, and pairs of shoes which now come into her life in doubles. These verses are followed by a gut punch; “it’s crazy/ I had big dreams ‘til I tied myself to you”. The song ends with her realising that the red and blue do not melt into purple anymore, but rather into a mush of black. 

A brief pause leads into the “you seem pretty sad” section of the album, starting with ‘the cure’. This section follows the young woman realising that her relationship is not going to cure her depression or make her life feel complete. The album is subtle when it deals with its muse, there is hardly any mudslinging or name dropping. The message emerges clearly as the strings settle down in the final minute of ‘the cure’ as she sings ‘it’s not you, it’s my sprawling depression that has latched onto the one good thing in a life that otherwise feels vacant’.

The following tracks show a slow disintegration. When Robert Smith makes his appearance on ‘what’s wrong with me’, his age and stature do not feel alien in this album. His decades-long career in detailing the sad gaps in our lives fit right into the New Wave sonics of the track; a sound he furthered in the 80’s when he was around Rodrigo’s age.

These lyrics are very similar to ‘maggots’. Both songs evoke images of a girl who cannot eat or sleep because of her lover. Except the dust has settled, the girl has realised that her expectations from her partner are what is wrong with her. The sentiment feels repetitive of the tenth track; sharply produced but sparsely thought through.

The breakup tracks is followed by a jarring talking-heads-type jolt in the track ‘expectations’. It accurately represents the Gen-Z urge to rush to “the apps” post-breakup, only to find a hollow slew of men with “fake jobs”. She has standards now, Rodrigo tells herself, only to immediately come down to the album closer, ‘cigarette smoke’; a regretful sigh, a painful realisation that has stuck around too long. 

The track is another instance of masterful and evocative production that falls short in poignant lyrics; the story has much more to it than “it’s bone dry, bitter, and hollow” or blunt truisms such as “You said I made loving look easy until I made it hard.” The sonics still leave an impression thanks to the Mazzy Stars and Cocteau Twins woven into the mix.

Olivia Rodrigo blew up in the throes of an angsty youth. While her sonic palette is evidently inspired and has broadly swayed between acoustic confessions and pop punk rants, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love shows a mature mingling of the two, reflecting Rodrigo’s growing understanding of human entanglement. 

You seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is now streaming on Spotify and other major music streaming platforms