Welcome Back Olivia Rodrigo, The Queen of Rock
Welcome to the latest edition of All the Music of All the World, our weekly series where we aim to share music worth being passionate about. Consider us a guide who can help you get the most out of your Victrola by giving you new music to listen to, or new ways to think about music you already know.
The biggest musical news this week—apart from the Strokes ensuring they never headline Coachella again, thanks to a brave video display—is the return of Olivia Rodrigo. If you haven’t heard her new single, “drop dead,” then start here:
It’s easy to get lost in the fact that she’s treating literal Versailles like it’s a suburban bedroom, because the last person to do so was probably Napoleon. But this single is another notch in the belt of the theory that Rodrigo—despite being lumped in with the post-Taylor Swift pop girlies like Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, and Addison Rae—is probably the biggest rock star we have anymore. She’s definitely the biggest artist on earth who loves playing guitar. This single is like a relaunch of the emotional balladry of ‘80s new wave rock, but with the sonic punch that it needs to get played on pop radio in 2026.
Though she came up through the Disney Child Star System, Rodrigo’s first solo music, the single “drivers license” was filled with small moment specificity; the suburban sprawl, the blonde that made her insecure, the repeated conversations with exasperated friends. It read less like a pop song and more like a relaunch of Alanis Morrissette or the Indigo Girls. It was the next single, “good 4 u” that cemented the ‘90s rock of it all: That one could have been a Hole single in 1999, could have been a Sheryl Crow single in 2002, could have been a Fanny single in 1973.
Her debut LP, sour, was filled with deep cuts that got fans from everyone from the Cure’s Robert Smith and Jack White. And after establishing that she could put spiky rock-pop on the top of the charts, she doubled down on her sophomore album, guts, which featured the best rock song of 2023, “ballad of a homeschooled girl.”
There is tons of rock music in the underground, obviously. It’s not “dead,” but it’s been years since someone that has billions of streams has embraced big riffs, big feelings, and music that could have topped the charts in 1996 as much as Rodrigo. And it never feels like a costume, or a pose: She’s referencing knowing why Smith wrote “Just Like Heaven” on “drop dead” because she literally does know why he wrote it. She’s performed it with him.
Rodrigo’s new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, with its title that sounds cribbed from a Smiths song, is due out on June 12. We can’t wait to see what it’ll do for rock in the 2020s.
