Olivia Rodrigo, Patron Saint of Teen Angst 🙏🏽

I feel like my heartache was stunted more or less at the age of 15, to loosely quote *my* RPDG UK Season 2 winner, Bimini Bonboulash, not a flex...just a fact. 

The best storytelling is universal but pointed, and that’s exactly Olivia Rodrigo’s superpower. She’s got this strange ability to tap into moments of acute pain from my past, a knack for dredging up ache I thought I’d worked through. Rodrigo metabolizes pain and redefines angst. To put it simply, she’s a legend, she’s an icon, and she is the moment™.

I spent weeks debating the pure and unrefined cultural reset power of Olivia’s debut single, Driver’s License. I spent an embarrassing amount of time watching Clevver News uncover new and newer still connections to the lives of 2010s era Disney Stars.

 If you want my honest opinion? The whole thing is cursed because Disney had the audacity to create High School Musical the Musical the Series, but that’s besides the point really. 

For a good two months I was enraptured by the sheer mess of it all. Sabrina Carpenter’s comeback (ok rude), Joshua Bassett’s alleged response (wack)...frankly, I spent a significant amount of time just questioning the obsession either girl had with Joshua to begin with.

Among other conclusions, my stance on Driver’s License was and remains: “You own everything that happens to you.”, I can’t remember where I first heard that and my level of “can’t” is a bit high today so--I won’t be doing the google research, but I’ve let this sentence guide a lot of my life, and a lot of my responses to it. 

Many people ragged on Taylor Swift for supposedly always writing about her exes, I can’t speak to this because I personally believe there’s a lot to rag on old T Swift for (*cough cough* white feminism) and writing about previous relationships just isn't that high on my list. Say what you want but, Taylor put her pussy in Fifteen…

I’ve seen Olivia compared to Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Lorde. Maybe she is this breathtaking amalgamation of her pop icon fore-sisters, but maybe she’s something more. 

Am I saying she’s the next Supreme?? I dunno, but what I am saying is that she is everything I want in a storyteller right now. Her honesty, her vulnerability, and her mastery inspire me to check back in with the teenage girl I was and continue to carry inside of me. 

We’re gathered here today though, to talk about Rodrigo’s second single, “Deja Vu”, which feels, funny enough, like the cooler, more self aware and jaded big sister of Driver’s License. Back when my DMs were full of convos about DL/whether or not she went too far or was too immature, I often told friends that I think her response to an intense romantic connection ending abruptly felt appropriate for a 17 year old.

When your heart is broken when you’re young, it truly feels like the end of your world. But that’s the thing about life, you can spend so much time worrying you’ll never come out the other side of something, and then you do--and you end up wondering how you ever doubted that you could in the first place. Listening (and let’s be honest, belting out) Driver’s License felt like a welcome catharsis for me. Me, who was definitely and often dropped for a prettier, older, blonder and (and thus what I perceived to be) more interesting girl. 

Driver’s License reminds me of what it feels like to be young and heartbroken, and it also reminds me of what it’s like to not have foresight. To, in a moment of extreme hurting, not have the ability to telescope out and see that the little white boy in my 2nd block has no real power over my heart, or over my mind. As T Swift sings towards the end of Fifteen: 

But in your life you'll do things

Greater than dating the boy on the football team

But I didn't know it at fifteen…

I told my anti-Olivia friends that my only hope for her is that as she matures as an artist and as a person, her storytelling expands too. For me, Deja Vu feels like the prophecy fulfilled.

 From its music box melody opening, to its crashing reprimand of a bridge and harrowing outro, we get all the now recognizable hallmarks of Rodrigo’s genius: neatly weaving a rich visual with story like lyrics - check, pinpointing the exact moment the predictable formerly beloved professes his “love” for the new girl - check, reminding the formerly beloved of his you-ain’t-shit-edness - check. Double check, actually.

In Deja Vu I feel her working through the pain, untangling her righteous feelings, deconstructing what has been tainted and rebuilding something a reality that suits her more. Rodrigo shows listeners that she’s grown, maybe not as much as you want her to, but just the right amount for right now.

At this point in her journey, Olivia can see the matrix and she’s realized everything I’d hoped she would: that she’s infinitely more interesting and impressive than the dude that hurt her (moment of silence for the Ariana level, “look at you/boy I invented you” double Billy Joel read), that it really isn’t the other girl’s fault, that on the other side of soul crushing heartache, there’s clarity. 

All this to say, this is very obviously an Olivia Rodrigo stan account and if you catch me driving around the city in a headscarf and shades screaming at the top of my lungs like somebody hurt me, it’s because -- a very long time ago someone did. 

https://www.tiktok.com/@nickpalmai1/video/6946719384949869830?lang=en&is_copy_url=0&is_from_webapp=v3&sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=6927422885246879237

My favorite thing about Olivia is the way she nimbly unlocks areas of my heart and reminds me to do a bit of housekeeping, take inventory of what hurts, and ask myself why it still does. 

There’s a line from an Alexander Chee essay that I think about a lot, like a lot a lot, “I wanted to look over the top of my life and see what was coming. I wanted to be the main character of this story, and its author.” We can’t know, what we can’t know. There’s no way to ctrl+f through the moments of sadness, pain and discomfort, and if there was, would we want to see what’s coming? 

All we really have, are moments when we are present in them, and the moments after those moments -- where we can attempt to glean a little something from them. I’m not suggesting there’s always a lesson to be learned from the tough times in life, I’m just wondering if maybe the only thing that’s actually guaranteed, is a chance to grow.