Olivia Rodrigo’s new album references another artist repeatedly. It’s not Taylor Swift.
Olivia Rodrigo's third album, 'You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,' features a significant artistic collaboration and thematic influence from The Cure's Robert Smith. The article explores how Rodrigo integrates the legendary post-punk musician's influence into her songwriting to evolve her sound beyond traditional pop tropes.
Why it matters
The collaboration highlights a notable cross-generational bridge in pop music, demonstrating how contemporary stars are increasingly looking to legacy alternative icons to add depth and complexity to their songwriting.
How do you review an artist like Olivia Rodrigo right now? She’s arguably the biggest twentysomething pop star today, ahead of even Sabrina Carpenter and Billie Eilish. Intelligent, charming, even politically outspoken , Rodrigo writes or co-writes all her songs and has had eight top 10 hits in the past five years, including the two advance singles from her new album, and a whopping four No. 1s. Her 2021 debut Sour (“ Drivers License ,” “ Good 4 U ”) recently became the first album by any female artist, including Taylor Swift, to reach 17 billion streams on Spotify . The punky kiss-off anthems of her 2023 album Guts were embraced by critics as much as the public, and the former Disney teen TV star has also won three Grammys and about 100 other prizes .
The article is a standard music review and cultural analysis that focuses on artistic influences and industry trends without taking a political or ideological stance.
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