Olivia Rodrigo just dropped her new album, Guts, and once again the singer has delivered the perfect coming-of-age soundtrack. This time, she's expressing the anguish of being 19.
It's been over two years since Rodrigo's debut album, Sour, arrived, birthing a new people's princess and making everyone feel like a teenage girl again. Despite Rodrigo graduating from her teens — she's 20 now — Guts inspires a similar reaction. The internet lexicon has had its evolution, too, with fans who relate a little too much to Rodrigo's youthful lyrics dubbing themselves "teenage girls in their 20s." One tweet (or, X post) read, "Guts by Olivia Rodrigo is the most devastatingly beautiful album written specifically for teenage girls in their 20s." Another said, "so grateful to have Olivia Rodrigo making music to soundtrack my teenage years (I am in my mid-20s)."
The rock-influenced album transforms the listener into the protagonist of an angsty coming-of-age story from a bygone era littered with crippling self-doubt, complicated friendships, and the wrong guys. One fan wrote, "Olivia Rodrigo made this entire album specifically for me to listen to while looking out of a train window like I’m in a coming-of-age film." Another X user said, "need to know what early 2000s teen movies Olivia Rodrigo watched as she made an album that could quite replace virtually any of their soundtracks without sounding out of place."
Aside from the album's perfect teenage vibe, it also contains some truly scathing and provocative lyrics that have the people talking. Standouts include the self-depricating couplet from the song "ballad of a homeschooled girl": "Everything I do is tragic / Every guy I like is gay." And the biting line that requires knowledge of Rodrigo lore to fully appreciate, "But I am my father's daughter, so maybe I could fix him." A fan posted the lyric with the caption, "(her father is a therapist)." Over on TikTok, a fan posted a video to "logical" writing, "EXCUSE ME??? GIVE ME MY DIARY PAGES BACK OLIVIA!!!!!!!!!!"
Guts also stirred a discussion of why art about been 19 is just so captivating, especially for adults. One Twitter user shared, "albums abt being 19 are always so good bc it’s one of the worst things that can happen to a person." Another added Rodrigo to the cannon of songs about being 19 with the caption, "why must every nineteen year old girl go through hell and back."
Rodrigo is so good that we're calling it: This fall, everyone is a teenage girl in their 20s.
