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Livia Rodrigo envisions punk music as it was perceived during childhood: loud, angry, and melodic, with a giddy and girly energy. It brings to mind the type of music featured in movies like Freaky Friday and Josie and the Pussycats, which served as a wake-up call from the bubblegum-pop-induced hypnosis of the time. Rodrigo’s second album, Guts, takes inspiration from both classic and contemporary pop-rock artists such as Liz Phair, Courtney Barnett, and Weezer, but it primarily pays homage to this Hollywood portrayal of punk, which always seemed edgier and more sarcastic than reality.
Guts is Rodrigo’s follow-up to 2021’s world-beating Sour, the kind of once-in-a-blue-moon debut that turns someone into an A-list megastar overnight. On that record, Rodrigo often cast herself as a scorned ingenue done wrong by a shitty guy and, occasionally, the world at large. Guts, as a title, is a statement of bravado and one of fallibility: on this album, Rodrigo is more brazen and far less sure of herself, scaling impossible heights before reminding herself, often callously, that she’s human. She goes to parties and word-vomits other people’s secrets, before screaming bloody “social suiciiiiiideeeee!” She laughs off a crap guy to her friends then leaves the sesh early to meet up with him. She saves her most vitriolic ballad for another woman, mere moments after acknowledging the pressure of being “a perfect all-American bitch”.
The central track on the album, All-American Bitch by Guts, is a fiercely biting rock song that serves as a pivotal point in the constant struggle between Rodrigo’s feminist responsibilities and her primal desires for desire and envy. Her friends act as a sassy Greek chorus in the boy-chasing anthem Bad Idea Right?, with Rodrigo’s sultry vocals tempered by a sense of remorse. While the standout moment on Vampire, a heart-wrenching breakup ballad with a strong musical theatre influence, is not in its powerful chorus but when Rodrigo confesses: “Every girl I ever talked to warned me about you, saying you were bad news / I dismissed them as crazy, and now I hate that I acted the same way.”
At the age of 20, Rodrigo grew up in a time where it was common for popular musicians to identify as feminists, but rare for them to fully understand the complexities of the term. She briefly mentions this idea on her song “Vampire,” but it is on the track “Lacy” where she fully delves into it, admitting to a female rival that she harbors feelings of hate towards her. While there has been speculation over who Lacy is about, it is more important to recognize the mastery of the song – it is both spiteful and loving, with clever lyrics and a sense of emotional pain.
Rodrigo’s cunning as a songwriter is evident in the fact that Lacy is the most impactful song on Guts. Unlike her former mentor Taylor Swift, love is not a matter of life or death in Rodrigo’s world. However, losing a friend or compromising your own identity just to denigrate them could be. Meanwhile, guys are merely fodder in her world: “Get Him Back!”, the most energizing point of Guts, is likely to be the closing song of Rodrigo’s live performances for the foreseeable future. With its steady rhythm and anthem-like quality – akin to a female version of Weezer – it encapsulates the themes of “girl power” and “girl code” that have been prevalent in 2021. Like the rest of Guts, it resides in a murky emotional space, but this time it’s caught between seeking revenge and seeking reconciliation. This is Guts in a nutshell: toxic, chaotic, and exhilarating.
Source: theguardian.com
