★★★★☆

When your debut album wins you three Grammy awards, it can be hard to know where to go next. Play it safe and stick to the proven formula, or swing for the fences, secure in the knowledge that people are already bound to pay attention? 

For Olivia Rodrigo, it appears to be a mix of both. Following the critical and commercial success of “SOUR” in 2021, Rodrigo is back with “GUTS,” a 12-track album released Sept. 8 that refines and builds on her distinctive storytelling voice while showcasing new maturity as an artist. The themes may be familiar — infatuation, heartbreak and coming of age are hardly revolutionary subjects — but Rodrigo’s increasing stylistic confidence and dry wit combined with the emotional vulnerability of a diary entry make it well worth the listen.

Whether she is going back to an ex in a show of calculated naivete against every sign from the universe in “bad idea right?” or playing with double meanings in the title of “get him back!”, Rodrigo is at her best when she’s having fun. “Thought your mom was your wife / Called you the wrong name twice / Can’t think of a third line,” she laments in “ballad of a homeschooled girl,” playful with a side of aching self-awareness. 

Like “SOUR” before it, “GUTS” is unmistakably a love letter to pop, but this time around, Rodrigo chooses to lean harder into her rock and punk influences. The resulting album is a mix of melancholy, acoustic-driven ballads like “making the bed,” “logical” and “teenage dream” alongside the up-tempo cheekiness of  “bad idea right?”, “get him back!” and “ballad of a homeschooled girl.” 

“GUTS” hits the ground running with “all-american bitch,” an opening track that jumps from acoustic guitar and airy vocals to electric guitar and slamming drums, highlighting Rodrigo’s performative composure. “I got class and integrity / Just like a goddamn Kennedy, I swear / With love to spare,” Rodrigo insists, even as her voice breaks off into a growl and the chorus comes crashing back with a vengeance. Even her cathartic scream at the end is carefully modulated.

The song’s clashing characterizations are an excellent setup for what’s to come, as “GUTS” delights in emotional paradoxes and overlapping musical styles. “Vampire,” one of two songs released as singles ahead of the album, starts as a piano ballad lamenting a relationship gone wrong. The tension slowly creeps upward, building to a cutting indictment of her ex as a “bloodsucker, famefucker,” after which the beat kicks in like a pounding heartbeat and Rodrigo lets her resentment take the reins. It’s a classic breakup anthem with a strong-enough metaphor to give it a delightfully eerie twist. 

The breathy “lacy,” on the other hand, blurs the fine line between jealousy and attraction. The eponymous subject is a “dazzling starlet, Bardot reincarnate” whom Rodrigo loathes and worships in equal measure, a dynamic that wouldn’t be out of place among her more explicitly romantic tracks. On “GUTS” alone, there are multiple love songs that share the same theme. 

Nor is “lacy” the only song to obsess over the feminine ideal, as “pretty isn’t pretty” decries the image that’s “on the poster on the wall” and “in the shitty magazines” that only succeeds in making her feel terrible. Does this kind of envy make for its own genre of love song? Maybe. At the very least, there are plenty of ways to relate to the sentiment. 

This idea also plays into the album’s overarching theme of youth and inexperience. “I know my age and I act like it,” Rodrigo declares on the first track of “GUTS,” and the other 11 tracks seem to be dedicated to figuring out what that means. She spends “another day pretendin’ I’m older than I am” on “making the bed,” speculates that an ex was only interested in her because “girls [his] age know better” on “vampire” and wonders when she’ll “stop being wise beyond my years and just start being wise” on “teenage dream.”

Rodrigo was 19 when she wrote her sophomore album, the same age as many actual college sophomores. Those listening who are in that period of their life may be familiar with feeling messy and vulnerable, self conscious and grimly self-aware, desperate to grow up but reluctant to lose the advantages of youth. 

Others may not be able to relate, and that’s fine too — “GUTS” still has plenty to offer. With a promising foray into new musical stylings and a slightly edgier twist on familiar themes, Rodrigo makes a compelling case for her continued relevance even as she leaves her teenage years behind. That takes guts.