It sounds like Olivia Rodrigo is taking a bit of an edgier direction with her new music. In an interview with the New York Times, Rodrigo shared the details of the new rock sound that the tracks on her upcoming album Guts share. The highly anticipated album is set to be released on September 8.
According to Billboard, “the publication reports that the new record’s first track ‘All-American Bitch’ features fuzzy power chords and several f-bombs, while ‘Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl’ finds the young star chanting ‘a litany of embarrassing party fouls over a springy bass line’ while letting out cathartic screams.”
A few of the songs on the album were recorded the old-school way – live and with a full band.
When referring to Guts, New York Times stated that Rodrigo is “Trojan-horsing in rock’s musical brashness and emotional spikiness under the cover of pop stardom.”
In her interview with the publication, Rodrigo shared her thoughts around the album saying,
“For me, that’s what music is, it’s expressing those feelings that are really hard to externalize, or that you feel aren’t societally acceptable to externalize, especially as a girl.”
She continued,
“[I] always loved rock music, and always wanted to find a way that I could make it feel like me, and make it feel feminine and still telling a story and having something to say that’s vulnerable and intimate.”
She also touched on how she looks up to women who create rock music without “trying to recreate a version of rock music that guys make.”
Rodrigo recently released “Vampire” and “Bad Idea Right?”, both singles that will appear on the album and the singer’s first music since she dropped her iconic album Sour in May 2021. “Vampire” debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100, while “Bad Idea Right?” topped the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart.
