If You Like Olivia Rodrigo, Check Out…

By Abena Oppon

Following on from my review of GUTS, this month’s edition of ‘If You Like… Check Out…’ is about Olivia Rodrigo. Upon writing that review, (listening to that album, and re-listening to SOUR) I found myself comparing Rodrigo’s music to that of some artists that I did not expect.

Rodrigo’s discography is multifaceted, containing the initial string of ballads on SOUR, the strong thread of pop-rock further developed on GUTS, and the in-between, intermittent synth-pop jaunts that pop up occasionally throughout. The prominence and popularity of an artist whose music is so varied could then be a gateway for many to plenty of new genres, and so the artists featured in this column are perhaps a bit eclectic.

Ingrid Michaelson

If you’re a fan of Rodrigo’s many ballads, then Ingrid Michaelson’s music may scratch a similar itch. The New York City native has a sizeable backlog of pop, indie, and country-inspired music — even a Christmas album. Michaelson’s most recognisable song might be ‘Be OK’, a twee ukulele number accompanied with earnest hand claps and snaps that allowed it to find its way into countless television shows.

‘Time Machine’, in the vein of songs like ‘vampire’ and ‘jealousy, jealousy’, takes a rightfully irate tone. 

On this country-rock banger, Michaelson warns her past self about her relationship over percussive piano, stabs of choral backing vocals and a stomping beat. ‘Over You’, a duet with A Great Big World, is similarly retrospective, but has a commiserating tinge similar to ‘get him back!’. Rodrigo inches towards forgiveness on ‘the grudge’, and ‘hope ur ok’: if you’d like something similarly magnanimous then you may enjoy Michaelson’s highest charting song, ‘The Way I Am’, and her collaboration with Zayn, ‘To Begin Again’. ‘The Way I Am’, an ode to a couple loving each other as they are, is more syrupy than anything Rodrigo has written, but is as sonically delicate as some of her softer cuts. On the other hand, ‘To Begin Again’ is an electro-pop number on which Michaelson and Zayn’s voices marry surprisingly well.

The song of hers I would most like to highlight would be ‘The Chain’. It’s much more acceptant than damning, as Michaelson sings of a now-absent lover over a gentle 6/8 beat. The last half of the song is performed by several Ingrid Michaelsons, the chorus broken up and performed in the round before neatly cycling back to monophony. If you like Olivia Rodrigo’s music you probably like piano ballads, and this is one that is creative in its simplicity.

Hole

Formed in 1989, feminist punk-rockers Hole had been acclaimed and lambasted for their image and the content of their music by music critics and theoretical scholars alike. Nowadays we might only recognise frontwoman Courtney Love for her marriage to Kurt Cobain, but in the ‘90s, she was notorious for her raucous behaviour, self-coined “kinder-whore” dress sense, and outspoken nature — British magazine Melody Maker called her a “one-woman spite factory”. The juxtaposing, contradictory gender expectations deconstructed in Rodrigo’s ‘all-american bitch’ can be seen in the way Love was depicted in the media. She was never the correct kind of woman or feminist; she never spoke about the right things, or grieved the death of Cobain correctly. While this is in part due to the ideological tumult third-wave feminism found itself in, much of the coverage about Hole’s music and imagery was simply concerned with unearthing some essence of a singular feminist mission in Love’s complex self-presentation.

‘all-american bitch’ and ‘ballad of a homeschooled girl’ are both perfect entry points to Hole’s music — they bear striking resemblance to ‘Celebrity Skin’, the title track from their 1988 album of the same name. Celebrity Skin was a more commercial turn compared to their previous two albums, but if you like Olivia Rodrigo, it’s the best starting point. If you want something even poppier, try the acoustic ballad ‘Someone Else’s Bed’ from 2010’s Nobody’s Daughter, an album originally conceived as a solo project for Love before she reformed the band with different members (Hole originally disbanded in 2002). If ‘Someone Else’ is on the mellower side of the spectrum of Hole’s discography, then ‘Violet’, a darkly ironic look at patriarchal abuse, is definitely on the other. While it is admittedly a long way away from Rodrigo’s music sonically, what persists is the through-line of asserting one’s space in the genre of rock  — and although Hole disbanded again around 2014, the path paved by the band still remains. 

Rachel Chinouriri

Rachel Chinouriri has a very similar voice to Rodrigo: soft but unexpectedly powerful, as seen on her most recent single, ‘The Hills’. It’s a classic scream-along rock song about teenage angst, with shoegaze elements,  paired with a music video that evokes the sense of isolation that comes with feeling homeless, stateless, not accepted.  Chinouriri, born in London, raised in Zimbabwe, and constantly miscategorised as an R&B artist, has had to rail against industry stereotypes as a black girl in pop-rock.

‘Ribs’ tells of an all-consuming love — like a “chest infection” — similar to the teenage obsession of ‘drivers licence’. ‘Ribs’ is  bouncy and summery, from the infectious and playful ‘la-la’s of the intro right till the very end. 

Her most popular song, ‘So My Darling (Acoustic)’, blew up on tiktok in a sped-up pitched-up form, as all popular songs seem to do these days. Over an acoustic guitar and lush harmonies, she sings about a very idealistic kind of eternal love, one that lasts from school years to the end of their lives. It’s slightly melancholy in its anticipation of such a thing but wholesome all the same. 

Weezer

This suggestion might be ridiculous, comical even. I recognise that, but I stand by it. Aside from them both being Californian, one might not think that Rodrigo has much in common with this nerdy rock band that peaked in the 90s. Rodrigo’s fans are teenagers who blow her songs up on TikTok, and Weezer’s are awkward and terminally online, communing in fan clubs and subreddits. Rivers Cuomo has written too many bitter, poorly-aged songs about his romantic failures to appeal to a more conscious

fanbase who may rightfully wince at the lines “everyone’s a little queer, why can’t she be a little straight?” or “I wonder how you touch yourself / and curse myself for being across the sea”. Weezer’s sophomore slump, Pinkerton, is a bit crude, in all senses of the word. 

That being said, the two share much in lyrical content and instrumentation; in particular, the guitar tones on GUTS constantly remind me of that on Weezer’s tenth studio album, Weezer (known as the White Album). If you like the unravelling honesty and fuzzy riffs of ‘ballad of a homeschooled girl’, songs such as the breezy ‘Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori’, the wistful ‘Endless Bummer’, and coy ‘Friend of a Friend’ might be of interest. Looking further back in their discography, if you like the verse-chorus juxtaposition in ‘all-american bitch’, you might like ‘Burndt Jamb’ from 2002’s Maladroit, which begins fairly tame before blasting into a distorted instrumental. From their debut, Weezer (the Blue Album) comes ‘The World Has Turned and Left Me Here’, which is similarly self-deprecating as ‘get him back!’. Here, Cuomo muses about his own self-deceit: “I talked for hours to your wallet photograph / And you just listened / You laughed enchanted by intellect / Or maybe you didn't”.

While their rock songs are the main point of the comparison between them and Rodrigo, the band also touch on contemporary dilemmas in surprisingly unironic, self-reflective ways. If you like the mellow of Rodrigo’s ‘making the bed’, and the whirry mellotron synths of ‘deja vu’, then you might like ‘Numbers’ and ‘Dead Roses’ from Weezer’s OK Human. Actually, the whole of OK Human is a sort of Beatles pastiche with an introspective, meditative tone similar to that of ‘pretty isn’t pretty’.