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Tag: Olivia Rodrigo Guts (Spilled)

  • Olivia Rodrigo’s “Obsessed” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” As Companion Pieces

    Olivia Rodrigo’s “Obsessed” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” As Companion Pieces

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    Just as Olivia Rodrigo’s “Obsessed,” a bonus track from the Guts (Spilled) edition of her sophomore album, is focused on the “three’s a crowd” theme, so, too, is Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste.” But more than merely referring to the “three’s a crowd” trope in general, each song has its emphasis on when the male in a hetero relationship is still in contact with his ex…whether metaphorically or literally (which is why Mýa’s “Case of the Ex” is owed a great debt in both singles’ cases). Or, perhaps worse still, when he constantly (whether openly admitting it or not) compares his ex to his current girlfriend. In ways both insidious and overt that eventually make him go back to the ex in question because he feels that only she can fulfill what he “really” needs, and maybe he made a mistake in leaving her in the first place (see: Ben Affleck with Jennifer Lopez). Carpenter’s “Taste” speaks to the latter, while Rodrigo’s “Obsessed” details how a current girlfriend in the “three’s a crowd” permutation is the one more fixated on an ex than the boyfriend who was actually with her (ergo, the lyrics, “If I told you how much I think about her/You’d think I was in love”).

    Considering Rodrigo and Carpenter’s love triangle history (with a mid white guy, mind you—which just goes to show that it really is “Slim Pickins” out there, even for meticulously groomed celebrities), one might speculate that there’s a certain element of “Taste” that’s retroactively directed at her. Especially if she listened to “Obsessed” (which of course she did). However, most feel that Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello are the inspiration rather than Joshua Bassett and Rodrigo. And yet, there’s no denying that the latter two were the “OGs” in terms of providing Carpenter with plenty of raw material for this subject matter. Just as Carpenter likely helped furnish a blueprint for Rodrigo’s “Obsessed,” a “rock” (by pop standards)-oriented track during which she moodily sings, “I’m so obsessed with your ex/I know she’s been asleep on my side of your bed, and I can feel it.” Almost as though directly replying to that line, Carpenter casually boasts during “Taste,” “Now I’m gone, but you’re still layin’/Next to me, one degree of separation.” So it is that, at times, “Obsessed” and “Taste” come across like call and response companion pieces. (Though less feud-y and direct then, say, the call and response songs between Drake and Kendrick Lamar.)

    Rodrigo is already famously known for being a victim of self-flagellating comparison—of the sort that Carpenter’s playful confidence in most of her songs goes directly against. With “Taste,” she appears to be trolling just that sort of “Rodrigo girl” with inherently low self-esteem by goading her via the lines, “Every time you close your eyes/And feel his lips, you’re feelin’ mine/And every time you breathe his air/Just know I was already there.” She digs the knife even deeper by highlighting the “sloppy seconds” aspect of this dude getting passed back to the erstwhile ex, chirping, “You can have him if you like/I’ve been there, done that once or twice/And singin’ ‘bout it don’t mean I care/Yeah, I know I’ve been known to share.” The latter lyric is where Carpenter directly refers to the love triangle that was made notorious by Rodrigo through “drivers license,” during which she calls out “that blonde girl” her own ex is “probably with,” also getting the dig in that she’s “so much older than me” (the two are four years apart, but one supposes that seems like a lot when one is seventeen, the age Rodrigo was when she wrote the song).

    While Rodrigo’s standard songwriting method is to home in on every painful detail about a breakup (a trait picked up from Taylor Swift by many “next generation” girls), Carpenter, in contrast, has a much more sardonically glib approach (one that especially shines through on the undercuttingly emotional “Sharpest Tool” from Short n’ Sweet). That’s the tone that embodies “Taste” as she shrugs off the loss of a so-called man who was way too into his ex…to the point where he would end up getting back together with her (another theme present on Short n’ Sweet’s “Coincidence”).

    Even though, beneath all the jocular, braggadocious armor, Carpenter was likely just as obsessed with that boyfriend’s ex as Rodrigo when she admits, “I’m starin’ at her like I wanna get hurt/And I remember every detail you have evеr told me, so be careful, baby.” Where the song starts to veer away from the type of guy Carpenter is alluding to in “Taste” is when Rodrigo mentions, “You both have moved on, you don’t even talk/But I can’t help it, I got issues, I can’t help it, baby.” And yet, such a confession does only serve to underscore the point Carpenter makes in the chorus of “Taste”: “Well, I heard you’re back together and if that’s true/You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you/If you want forever, and I bet you do/Just know you’ll taste me too.” In other words, there’s always three people in a relationship: the “au courant” couple and the guy in said couple’s ex-girlfriend (since, in pop culture, women’s exes don’t seem to invoke as much jealousy, obsession and fear).

    Being that the narrative of “Obsessed” essentially mimics the plot of Sex and the City’s season episode, “Three’s A Crowd,” it’s fair to say that it also applies to “Taste.” And when Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) gives the rueful voiceover, “What Mr. Big didn’t realize was the past was sleeping right next to me” in response to him saying, “Let’s not talk about the past, please,” it’s only further proof that the ex has won even if she’s no longer with him. Because, yes, Carrie can still “taste” her when she’s kissing Big (Chris Noth). Which just goes to show that there is plenty of underrated vindication in being someone’s ex in terms of “leaving a mark”—even if you were foolish enough to think you could never live without them.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Less Sophomoric Efforts Appear on Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts (Spilled)

    Less Sophomoric Efforts Appear on Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts (Spilled)

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    After releasing four of the five songs that now appear on the Guts (Spilled) edition of Guts by way of hidden tracks on different versions of the album, Olivia Rodrigo has at last made those songs easily available to all—and she’s even thrown in an extra one for good measure (“so american”). Of course, it probably makes the people who bothered to collect all four editions of Guts in order to hear each hidden track feel a little bit used, but such is the nature of capitalism (just ask Taylor Swift, whose many versions of albums featuring different cover art or songs would be enough to drive any fan mad). 

    While Guts, overall, sounds like what can best be described as Sour: Part Deux, the additions of these particular tracks lend a less sophomoric feel to the record, even if many of them are still rooted in the same old “Olivia problems”—which is to say, she’s been deeply affected and/or hurt by a boy (or “man-child,” as Lana Del Rey would say). Except that, in the case of the first song that kicks off the round of bonus tracks, she’s been deeply affected/hurt by a boy’s ex. Obsessing over her endlessly and all the ways in which she’s probably superior. Hence, the song title: “obsessed” (which, it bears repeating, Mariah Carey has a monopoly on as much as she does Christmas). 

    The shorter (two minutes and one second) “girl i’ve always been” seems a continuation, in its way, of “obsessed” in that it finds Rodrigo insisting that she’s always been this way: obsessive, maniacal, “too much,” etc. And yet, the boy in question would dare to tell her, “Baby doll, you have changed.” To which Rodrigo replies, “I’m nothin’ if I’m not consistent/You knew everything you were gettin’.” The folksy meets alt-rock musical tone channels, in certain respects, a tincture of Kesha on Rainbow (e.g., “Hunt You Down,” “Godzilla” and Spaceship”) and Lana Del Rey in her post-Honeymoon era. Indeed, Del Rey is often channeled lyrically by Rodrigo within these bonus tracks. For example, the way she says, “I get down with crooked men” recalls the manner in which Del Rey declares, “I get down to beat poetry” on “Brooklyn Baby.” And then, as though to prove the adage that everything is a copy of a copy, Rodrigo wields the phrase, “I am a candle in the wind.” Although originally a phrase immortalized by Elton John, Del Rey recently took to adopting it on “Mariners Apartment Complex” (“I ain’t no candle in the wind”) and “Yosemite” (“No more candle in the wind/Not like before when I was burning at both ends”). Elsewhere, Rodrigo shrugs, “I can say I’m a perfect ten/But I am the girl I’ve always been,” which seems like a loose riff on the “She a ten, but…” meme. 

    A more “esoteric” (to those too daft to know) reference that Rodrigo is channeling on this song (unwittingly or not) is Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians’ “What I Am.” Her higher-pitched tone and sarcastic snarkiness easily harken back to this classic “alternative” hit from 1988. But, ultimately, Rodrigo must return to her go-to for emulations, Taylor Swift. At least with a song title such as “scared of my guitar,” which sounds a lot like the Swift title, “Teardrops on My Guitar.” And yes, there are certain thematic similarities in that Rodrigo discusses how the only “person” she can be completely honest with about her feelings is her guitar. And the reason she’s scared of it is because she doesn’t want to talk herself out of the idea that she’s “really happy” with the dude who treats her like shit (thus, “Perfect, easy, so good to me/So why’s there a pit in my gut in the shape of you?”). The slow, stripped down track is in keeping with other “whiny bitch” anthems Rodrigo has become known for (e.g., “traitor” and, more recently, “logical”) and perhaps one-ups Swift’s “Teardrops on My Guitar” on that front (and on the front where it’s not a country song). 

    Explaining why she’s so scared of her guitar, Rodrigo sings, “‘Cause it cuts right through to the heart/Yeah, it knows me too well so I got no excuse/I can’t lie to it the same way that I lie to you.” And to herself, for that matter. As for Swift, she pronounces,“‘Cause he’s the reason for the teardrops on my guitar/The only one who’s got enough of me to break my heart.” Each singer-songwriter turning to her only true confidant—the guitar—when things get messy in matters of romance. What’s more, both tracks build on a rare genre in music: women talking about their guitars. The only other singer to do that with notable panache was Amy Winehouse on “Cherry.” 

    The following song, “stranger,” also has some Swiftian parallels, lyrically speaking (though certainly not with its “ramblin’ man” musical sound). Namely, a parallel to “I Forgot That You Existed.” Granted, Rodrigo isn’t quite as cold in this song (not the way Swift is with her chirpy announcement, “I forgot that you existed/And it isn’t hate, it isn’t love/It’s just indifference”). For instance, she admits, “God knows that I am the girl I am because of you,” which feels like a biting homage to “girl i’ve always been.” Rodrigo even goes full-tilt Del Rey yet again with the lyric, “I’ll love you till the end of time” (someone’s been listening to “Blue Jeans”). And then, for the coup de grâce, “You’re just a stranger I know everything about” channels Gotye’s lyrics, “Now you’re just somebody that I used to know.” But sometimes, that can be for the best. For, like Billie Eilish on “Happier Than Ever” or Angela Chase (Claire Danes) saying she woke up one morning feeling like Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto) had been surgically removed from her heart, Rodrigo describes, “I woke up this morning and I sat up straight in bed/I had the strangest feeling of this weight off of my chest/I hadn’t felt that hopeful since the day that you left.”

    Rodrigo also seems hopeful on the final addition to Guts (making it Guts [Spilled]), “so american.” Not only continuing the motif of “all-american bitch” (both songs now functioning as “american”-related bookends to the record), Rodrigo opts for Springsteen’s sonic vibe again (the same way she does on “love is embarrassing”). And why shouldn’t she when she wants to give off the aura of being “so american”?

    Here, too, though, she’s serving up major Swift comparisons in that she’s also fallen for a British “man” (Louis Partridge, who’s about to come up in the world by appearing in the Alfonso Cuarón series, Disclaimer). One who Rodrigo makes mention of marrying when she sings, “Oh God, it’s just not fair of him/To make me feel this much/I’d go anywhere he goes/And he says I’m so American/Oh God, I’m gonna marry him.” That mention of “I’d go anywhere he goes” also coming across like Ariana Grande on Eternal Sunshine’s “imperfect for you” when she says, “Now I just can’t go where you don’t go.”

    It’s all a lot of pressure to put on a bloke, British or otherwise (“otherwise,” in this case, being a Munchkin). Something Swift herself must know about after writing “Paper Rings” and “London Boy.” Having clearly had her own fill (sexual innuendo intended) of Brits, Swift’s fine with being “so american” if one of her upcoming songs, “So Long, London,” is an indication. All the more reason for Rodrigo to say hello to it then.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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