Every Song Ranked on #Olivia_Rodrigo’s ‘Sour’: Critic's Picks

 

It feels like a lifetime has passed since the unexpected crash landing of Olivia Rodrigo’Olivia Rodrigos record-breaking debut single “Drivers License” in January, a song that has already gathered the social capital of a classic. The 18-year-old singer’s sticky follow up “Deja Vu” swatted away concerns of such a massive debut swallowing her career whole. Her third single, the venomous pop-punk rager “Good 4 U,” tapped into the sweltering annoyance that bubbled under the surface of her apparent sweetness. Now approaching the halfway mark of her breakout year, Rodrigo has released her highly-anticipated debut album Sour. 

Produced by close collaborator Dan Nigro (with Rodrigo credited on a few tracks), and written almost entirely by Rodrigo and Nigro, the 11-song collection serves as a key to the mind and soul of one of the most exciting new figures in pop music as she navigates heartbreak, coming of age, and the unstable landscape of Gen Z’s social media upbringing. In some moments, she draws from lessons taught in the singer-songwriter school of Taylor Swift to understand the inner turmoil of her heart. In others, her only catharsis comes from screaming out her emotions over roaring guitars and quaking basslines. 

Below, Billboard ranks every track on Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album Sour.

11. “Favorite Crime”

“Favorite Crime” centers on the examination of glaring red flags that only appear in their true colors through the lens of hindsight. As Rodrigo works through the aftermath of heartbreak in real time, the thinly veiled Bonnie and Clyde-type metaphor of the song loses its grip. No matter how much she shares in the name of working through the end of a relationship, she still holds some cards close to her chest, not ready to lay them all out just yet. 

10. “Jealousy, Jealousy”

If the mind of a teenager with an Instagram screen time of more than two hours were to be digitized, it would pretty much look just like the scene Rodrigo lays out on “Jealousy, Jealousy,” co-written with Nigro and Casey Smith. Over a plucky bassline and a prowling piano build, the singer -- who often finds herself obsessed, for better or worse -- makes sense of the incessant, toxic cycle of social media. Strangers become game pieces in a nonexistent mental competition of who can curate the most perfect online life, and Rodrgo can’t stop playing. She knows it isn’t real, but that doesn’t mean she’s willing to lose.