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Billboard ranks “Lacy” as the worst track off ‘GUTS’ by Olivia Rodrigo.
Billboard ranks all the songs off “GUTS”:
1. get him back!
2. all-american b*tch
3. vampire
4. ballad of a homeschooled girl
5. bad idea right?
6. love is embarrassing
7. teenage dream
8. pretty isn’t pretty
9.the grudge
10. making the bed
11. logical
12. lacy
With a less genuine singer, Rodrigo’s ruminations could be perceived as whiny. But her authenticity is so palpable, you just want to give her a hug.
“They tell me that they love me like I’m some tourist attraction,” she sighs with her deliberate delivery, as the song’s sumptuous melody escalates into a fury of guitars. But this time, the comedown is hard.
The album’s other trailer single, Bad Idea Right?, is driven by a chugging guitar riff that nods to the 1980s new wave era, but Rodrigo’s vocal delivery is coolly contemporary. When she repeatedly asks whether reconnecting with an ex is a “bad idea, right?” before swearing and saying “it’s fine”, it comes off as funny and relatable. “The key to Rodrigo’s songwriting is her ability to tell a great story in a way that feels like a conversation or as if you’re reading her diary,” says Daly, who also praises the singer for penning lyrics that capture “how people of her generation speak”.
Out on Friday, Rodrigo’s second album Guts is comfortably among this year’s most anticipated pop records. It has already yielded a transatlantic number one single, Vampire, which demonstrates Rodrigo’s range by beginning as a hushed piano ballad before building into a mini rock opera. Rodrigo has said she was inspired by 1990s female artists “who aren’t afraid to be angry and remorseful and like spiteful and snarling,” and you can definitely hear this when she crisply eviscerates an ex for “bleedin’ me dry like a goddamn vampire”.
Musically, Rodrigo sticks with the formula that instantly endeared her from the time she arrived in 2021: Pop that slow burns into a cresting boom of melodic punk.
All of “Guts” is destined for millions of streams since there isn’t a clunker among her efficient offerings, but these two tracks are standouts.
Aside from a couple of co-writing assists from Dan Nigro, who produced “Sour” as well as her new release, Rodrigo handles her own songwriting. Sometimes she’s bluntly funny (“I want to meet his mom just to tell her her son sucks,” she chants in the gleefully spiteful “Get Him Back!”), other times heartbreaking (“We both drew blood, but those cuts were never equal,” she laments on “The Grudge,” one of several songs with some well-placed expletives).
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