This Week's Drama: Olivia Rodrigo

Physically, I am 31. Emotionally, I am 19 and recently starred in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.

Hi! I’m back! I started a new job and made the transition from bingeing Below Deck: Down Under to bingeing Below Deck: Mediterranean so I’ve been super busy!

Last week’s drama that I’m writing about this week is GUTS - the masterpiece sophomore album released by Olivia Rodrigo. It’s 45 minutes of diary-style pop ballads and bangers, presumably about Rodrigo’s famous breakups with her High School Musical: The Musical: The Series co-star Joshua Bassett and some DJ guy named Zach…? 

The timing of this angsty-ass heartsick album could not be more perfect as I’m currently processing a breakup that happened almost six months ago. For some reason, it’s impossible for me to get over someone until I can get angry at them and right now, I’m ANGRY… enter GUTS!

Olivia Rodrigo falls into my favorite category of music - women singing about experiences of heartbreak in such distinct detail that I can find songs that apply almost directly to my experience. Then, I get to listen to those songs while replaying arguments in my head in the shower or while I write out novel-length texts I will (hopefully) never send to ex-boyfriends.

I think most of us who’ve been in dysfunctional relationships of any kind struggle with believing our own reality, and hearing a teen pop queen validate that your ex lied when they said it was true love because true love would be too hard for someone as heartless as them (a la Rodrigo’s Vampire) can be an extremely powerful antidote, or at least a brooding escape.

So, maybe the album release itself isn’t drama, but GUTS has provided the perfect soundtrack for the soap opera that is constantly unfolding in my head.

Unfortunately, Olivia Rodrigo does have alleged IRL drama with Taylor Swift, who pioneered the detailed-pop-lyrics-as-official-celeb-breakup-statement-to-give-fans-just-enough-insight-into-what-actually-happened-to-keep-us-wanting-and-buying-more method.

I find the idea of this feud threatening, because Olivia is my vocal guide right now but Taylor is who I name when men on hinge ask what “bands” I like —and yes, I do unmatch anyone who responds “haha really?” Or “anyone else?” So, I do not want to believe that Olivia’s Vampire is about Taylor being fake - I want to believe in peace and harmony and, like… feminism!?

I was able to attend Taylor Swift’s Eras tour this summer thanks to my friend Tess. Which means I got to scream/cry/sing along to the lyrics of every song that’s gotten me through every one of my many dramatic breakups. And they have been soooo unnecessarily dramatic like, someone at my new job asked me if I’m married or single last week and the only response that came to mind was “irrevocably cursed”.

At Eras, I got to belt out “don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?” at the thirty year-old finance guy who dated me when I was twenty/still actively wearing a Hello Kitty backpack. I had the privilege of messy-sob-singing “I know my love should be celebrated, but you tolerate it” at the ex-boyfriend who was fully not speaking to me as a silent treatment punishment when his mom group texted us because I had just sent his parents a surprise gift to their house (the punishment was for me accidentally spilling my lunch on one of his beach towels, yes you read that correctly). Oh, and of course there’s “I wonder what we could’ve become if you were a better man” which applies to… well, most of them. :/ And also to me.

I digress - Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS has been spilling out all over every aspect of my life. If I’m not listening to it, I’m thinking about it and about the heartbreaks I’ve lived through that Olivia has somehow found a way to encapsulate in catchy hooks, bridges and choruses.

I love, love, LOVE Vampire but I think Logical is my favorite track on GUTS and has become my current breakup anthem. My interpretation of Logical is that it’s all about falling in love with the dreamy idea of a person and then having to cope with the harsh reality that you fell too blindly and the relationship itself will never actually work. It’s about all the pain and self-blame that comes in the cold, dark wake of intense love bombing, when all you’re left with is the desperate desire to change someone or convince them to shine their light on you again. In Rodrigo’s words -

Do you like my attempt at an early-oughts-style MySpace graphic?

Since GUTS came out, I somehow found myself on the instagram stories of a girl from one of my ex’s pasts. And maybe his present. I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t even know how I ended up on her instagram! Such a weird coincidence. But even weirder is that…. She had posted Olivia’s Logical to her stories just mere DAYS after I posted Logical to my stories (I was very logically hoping one of that same ex’s friends might see the song in my story, listen to the lyrics, and understand that I was wronged by him). I’m actually really healthy and well! Thanks.

But honestly, jokes aside, seeing the song on this woman’s story moved me. It brought me back to the healing value of pop music like Olivia’s and Taylor’s and many more. That feeling of jumping up and down in a giant stadium with thousands of strangers SCREAMING lyrics about being called up again just to get broken like a promise by someone who’s casually cruel in the name of being honest, and knowing so many other people have felt the way you did when you were crying in the fetal position on your kitchen floor with Shake Shack sauce on your face.

And although I’m always jealous of how emotionally avoidant all the yachtie girls on Below Deck are and how their aloofness drives young Australian men crazy, I know that in order to be unified by our pain, and in order for that pain to become something productive, we have to be able to process it.

The processing of my current breakup has been aided and facilitated by so many late night conversations on friends’ couches and stoops, relating over our darkest moments of heartbreak, shame and loss. I wouldn’t be able to heal if I didn’t have people to call who have also made a habit of looking at their exes’ exes’ instagram stories.

I have always felt my feelings deeply, and have often been told that it’s too much for the men I’ve dated, but I would never change that about myself because the same thing that makes me feel extreme lows must be what allows me to feel extreme highs, to feel extremely seen and heard in a stadium full of people, to feel extreme joy when my friend’s baby daughter crawls over to me and gives me a hug right when I need one, to feel extreme gratitude when I’m having a hard time and call my mom late at night and she drives all the way into the city just to be near me and make me feel safe. I know that the Vampires of the world will never be able to feel those warm, glowing highs.

So, even if love isn’t logical, I know that I’m so lucky I have the guts to feel love as extremely as I do, and I don’t regret any of— well, never mind.

Thanks for reading!