Olivia Rodrigo released her third studio album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, in June of this year. The album acts as a time capsule of the rise and fall of a relationship, which she has accredited to happening naturally as she was writing chronologically about her life.
The album is divided into two sections: “a girl so in love,” which encompasses the first seven tracks on the album, and “you seem pretty sad,” which encompasses the final six tracks.
The album spans from the first date in “drop dead” to the breakup in “less” and the aftermath of the relationship in “expectations” and “cigarette smoke.” Within that positioning, the album explores Rodrigo’s experiences, emotions and internal conflicts throughout the relationship.
This brings forth an interesting dynamic between the narrator — that is, Rodrigo —suppressing or overlooking negative emotions attached to the relationship and the longevity of the relationship.
The first six songs of the album are love songs, where negative attributes of the relationship come up but are overlooked or excused. Then, the album’s seventh song, “purple,” placed right in the middle of the track list, acts as the specific moment where the narrator’s honest feelings start entering the conversation.
That’s not to say that the narrator’s feelings prior to “purple” were dishonest or that the entire relationship was ingenuine, but that the feelings that were not explored prior are coming to light.
But the honesty comes in parts. The eighth track “the cure” comes to terms with the fact that the narrator is not ok in this relationship, but it is attributed to the narrator’s own insecurities and problems, still not looking at their partner’s contribution. The whole picture is finally illustrated in “begged” and “what’s wrong with me,” where feelings that were suppressed all begin to surface, leading to “less,” where the relationship ends.
The last two tracks, “expectation” and “cigarette smoke,” are where the narrator reflects on the relationship, and the album closes on the line “tell me something honest / ‘til the memories go dark.” After going through a journey of partial honesty with oneself, the songs almost act as a reminder to not lose the whole truth again. This line itself breaks down the album with, “tell me something honest” referring to tracks on “you seem pretty sad,” and “‘til the memories go dark,” referring to tracks on “girl so in love.”
The first track of the album, “drop dead,” starts with, presumably, the first date of the narrator and their partner at the bar, drinking beer and talking about their favourite songs, with both the narrator and their partner physically present in the first verse.
This then leads to the chorus where they are still physically there, “all pressed up in the bathroom line,” where the partner’s “looking an angel on the walls of Versailles” and it’s “the most alive [the narrator’s] ever been.” This line follows from “I always had a vision of us standing like this,” ascribing that vision to “feminine intuition,” and is prior to “kiss me and I might drop dead.” This effectively places the moment in the bathroom line between the expectations and visions the narrator had before the date, and the visions for after.
This leads to the second verse, which starts in the physical reality, with her discussing the butterflies in her stomach and the mix of nervousness, excitement and paranoia of if she made him up: “I feel like I might throw up / Left hook, right punch to the gut / You’re so, so pretty boy / I’m paranoid I made you up.”
The song then shifts out of that physical moment and is entirely set in what the narrator wants and hopes for rather than what is currently happening in that moment:
“I’d love it if you walked me home / If you promised, we could go real slow / Cause I’ve got chewing gum and a bunch of stuff I’d like to know / Like, have you ever been to Japan? / Or taken that Eurostar to France? / I’ve dropping hints all night that I’d love it if you held my hand, goddamn / And then maybe we could make-make out […]”
Then, the bridge, in very simple lyrics, “Pisces and a Gemini, but I think we might go really nice together,” exemplifies how the narrator excuses negative aspects that her partner may be presenting. Pisces and Gemini are known to be incompatible signs, serving as a look into possible doubts about the relationship, but it is excused because the narrator thinks they might work out regardless. This is the first of many signs of doubt in the album which snowballs into doubts about the narrator, later turning into doubts about the relationship.
The second track on the album, “stupid song,” follows soon after the first date and explores how completely enamoured the narrator has become with their partner and wanting them “more than any stupid song could ever say.”
The track is romantic and situated in a place of overwhelming desire for a person at the start of a relationship, but throughout the journey of the album, the same feelings that are romanticized in the beginning become the cause of conflict in the end.
Through beautiful imagery, the chorus states, “I’m a heart made of wax, and I’m melting in the sun,” a metaphor for the narrator melting into the relationship, like a wax sculpture melting due to the sun.
Within the context of the song, this metaphor has very positive connotations of falling in love with someone. But the same concept of ‘melting’ reappears in a later track, “purple,” which describes ‘melting’ as a symbol for losing identity.
The loss of identity begins from “stupid song”: “Seven nights alone and a skipped meal / I’m sleeping in my dress and my high heels / And I’m too shy to say what I see when I dream of you,” it highlights the beginning of the codependency.
Another metaphor in the chorus of “stupid song”: “I’m a thread on your shirt and it’s coming undone” depicts the loss of emotional stability but in a positive light, as a symptom of falling in love. The concept is then revisited in “the cure,” where the narrator repeats the line, “I’m unraveled,” depicting their loss of emotional stability but in a negative light, as they feel all-consumed by their own doubts and thoughts.
The transition from “coming undone” to being “unraveled,” has a finality to it, demonstrating how things that were romanticized during the beginning of the relationship turned sour near the end.
The narrator’s dishonesty with themself and habit of overlooking their emotions is further exemplified in “stupid song,” with the line, “I feel right, I feel wrong, I feel totally insane,” signalling doubt which eventually manifests in “the cure,” where the lyrics suggest that the reason for the doubt is because of themself and their frustration with the fact that their partner could not be the cure. The partner’s role in why the narrator is feeling these emotions are not explored until the song “what’s wrong with me” where Rodrigo sings, “I think you’re what’s wrong with me.”
Then, there’s the third track, “honeybee.” The song acts as both, a beautiful love song exploring how being so in love with someone causes a constant state of worry for losing them, as well as a look into the narrator’s recurring feelings of doubt and the missing piece of security the relationship is not providing. Ultimately, the song ends on the note of “here’s to hoping,” hope that the security will come and, correspondingly, the fears will be proven wrong.
The doubt in the song however is not explored, simply mentioned.
Then there is the line that sparked this entire analysis: “It’s too hard to describe this / In a way that feels honest.”
The indescribable thing is love, which has been notoriously indescribable for possibly all of human existence. The other side of this is that maybe the narrator is struggling to describe the feeling of love honestly because they are not exploring all the emotions that the relationship evokes.
Rodrigo has a song exploring this exact scenario in her sophomore album GUTS called “scared of my guitar,” expressing that she does not want to write because they because then she would have to admit her feelings, saying:
“I say that I’m fine, i tell you all the time / I’ve never felt so happy and sure / but I’m so scared of my guitar / ‘Cause it cuts right through to the heart / It knows me too well, so i got no excuse / I can’t lie to it the same way that I lie to you.”
While in “honeybee” the narrator is still writing, they are struggling to describe their feelings honestly.
This then leads into “maggots for brains” where the codependency first found in “stupid song” comes to fruition. The track illustrates the narrator’s feelings when their partner goes away, describing themselves as a zombie: rotting, dirty and bored out of their mind.
It highlights how intertwined the narrator and their partner have gotten and how the narrator’s life completely revolves around their partner, leaving them incapable of doing anything but think of them. It explores how missing their partner and being apart from them is impacting their life, but not necessarily in a positive nor negative light, this light is shone more clearly in “purple.”
The song is followed by “u + me = <3,” which is essentially the happier version of “honeybee.”
The narrator reiterates that fear of losing their partner, “I know everybody changes, but I hope that we don’t.” She also demonstrates her hopefulness and willingness to try for the relationship, singing, “they say modern love’s a cruel endeavour, and to that I say, ‘fuck it, whatever.’”
“u + me = <3” is arguably the happiest song on the album. However, within this concept of honesty and the narrator’s relationship with being honest with themselves, the lyrics in “u + me = <3” are very reminiscent of lyrics in “logical,” from Rodrigo’s sophomore album GUTS.
The thesis of “logical” is that “love is never logical,” and the chorus of the song describes that illogicality by comparing the thought of believing she is the love of someone’s life to “two plus two equals five,” an equation that is mathematically impossible and defies all logic, just like love.
While the two songs are assumed to be referencing two different relationships, the subjects of these songs still centre the narrator’s feelings and provide a look into the narrator’s outlook at different times during a relationship.
“u + me = <3” is set during a relationship, while “logical” is set in the aftermath of a relationship. So, “you plus me equals a heart forever” could be seen as logically sound as “two plus two equals five,” just at different times in a relationship, especially under the premise that the narrator’s perception of the reality of the relationship transforms throughout the album, as one of the final lyrics of the album comes back to question, “why’d I try at all?”
The next track, “my way,” presents the clearest case for where truths about the relationship have been suppressed or overlooked until afterwards. The song “my way” is a message from the narrator to a girl who keeps crossing boundaries into the narrator’s relations, by sending their partner poems and posting pictures in their partner’s clothes.
The entire song is focused on this other girl getting in the narrator’s way and the dynamic between the two in relation to the narrator’s partner, but it does not highlight the partner’s role in this dynamic at all.
This whole concept of the narrator’s relationship with honesty and the reality of the relationship begins to actualize from “purple” onwards.
Which in the first chorus, deplores the same connotations saying, “I melt with you, your red and my blue, now I see the world in purple,” it’s a beautiful depiction of meshing your life with someone.
But the feelings transform from infatuation to sadness. Which is also depicted in how the counterpart of the songs is described as “a spark in the dark,” to being the reason “it all turns black,” and eventually her asking for “something honest, ‘til the memories go dark.” During the beginning of the relationship, this individual is a spark. However, the relationship eventually leads the narrator back into the dark, but they can only return to that dark with honesty.
This is the moment in the relationship where the word “melting” transitions from falling in love to losing a sense of self. The production of “maggots for brains” is much darker then the first three tracks, showcasing they are melting “‘til it all goes black; […] ‘til [it] just feels sad.”
The track “purple” is perfectly placed between the two halves of the album because it describes, from “drop dead” to “my way,” how the couple melted together to see the world in purple until the purple got too dark and started turning black, then within that darkness, the remaining tracks explore emotions that had been previously suppressed, to unveil a fuller picture of the relationship.
The first verse of “purple” describes the positive aspects of codependency, while the second verse describes the negative aspects, all building to the line “I had big dreams ‘til I tied myself to you.” This specific line is where the album transitions from “girl so in love” to “you seem pretty sad.”
The line recapitulates “maggots for brains,” but the sadness is no longer just the narrator’s internal conflict about missing their partner, it is the consequence of the couple’s codependency.
Rodrigo’s songs are autobiographical and she has been open about taking inspiration from her life. With the context of Rodrigo and the lyric “I had big dreams ‘til I tied myself to you,” a prior lyric, “tried to write, nothing came out” from “maggots for brains,” holds significant weight.
She is incapable of writing, a key aspect of her career and her “big dreams” because she has become so dependent on this relationship, “tied [herself] to [him].”
The chorus in “purple” does not change lyrically after either of the verses, but it does change connotatively. After the first verse, the chorus shows the meaning of “melting” in a positive light, of falling in love and of seeing the world as one, similar to how it is meant in “stupid song.”
However, after the second verse, “melting” becomes a symbol of the two becoming one and the narrator losing their sense of self.
Relevant to the concept of losing identity, the colour purple has been strongly associated with Rodrigo since her debut album SOUR and has since played a significant role in her popstar identity. Purple is so intrinsically connected with her career, but within the relationship it is no longer hers, but theirs; it’s how they see the world, even though her world had already been associated with and even defined by purple since she was seventeen years old.
This “melting” as a metaphor for the loss of identity becomes increasingly prominent in the post-chorus, where the lyrics change from “I melt with you, your red and my blue / Now I see the world in purple,” to “Melt with you ‘til it all turns black.”
As well, the doubts that had previously been named then excused are now bluntly being questioned, “Are we so in love? Are we too attached?”
Then, the narrator follows those questions with “when you smooth it out, but it feels so flat,” a direct reference to “I feel dirty, I feel rotten, and the colors are all flat,” from “maggots for brains.”
The post-chorus is very distorted and dark, illustrating the colour purple darkening into black until the song somberly ends with “melt with you ‘til I just feel sad,” right as the “you seem pretty sad” part of the album commences.
The section begins with the second single of the album, “the cure.” The eighth track revolves around the narrator’s frustration with their partner’s love not being enough to fix them; to cure them.
The disease the narrator wants to be cured from is their own insecurities; the album has shown numerous times how the narrator has struggled with feeling secure in the relationship. The lyric, “all the pretty girls in foreground of my mind / i thought I’d done enough, but they keep moving the line,” is a topic Rodrigo has explored in her song “pretty isn’t pretty,” from her album GUTS. And the topic of being enough, or more so feeling like she is not enough is a recurring theme throughout her discography, most prominent in the track “enough for you.”
While “enough for you” expresses the desire to be enough for one’s partner, “the cure” is about the relationship not being enough to fix the narrator.
“the cure” is very self-reflective and focused on the narrator’s faults and internal battles, and while all of this may hold true, it does leave out her partner’s role in her insecurities.
To refer back to “my way,” her partner’s role in the dynamic between the narrator and the other girl does not come to light until “begged,” with the line “all that I want is to know undoubtedly / that you just have eyes for me / could you make it clear?” and “cigarette smoke” with the lines “but it’s better than begging for you to stand up for me, honeybee” and “I resent you for taking her side.” Though it is not explicitly spelt out that these are references to “my way,” it is the most likely inference within the album’s universe, as no other female characters are mentioned.
So, as the narrator is struggling with security, the time when they would want to feel that security is when another person is interfering in their relationship, but the narrator never receives that security.
Furthermore, “the cure” reflects positively on the partner, “I got toxins in my bloodstream, you tried hard to suck them out / And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure / But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore / It’ll never be the cure.” This depicts the partner as trying to help and being good for the narrator, and the narrator and their internal battles and conflicts as the issue.
However, the song following immediately after, “begged,” shines a different light to that narrative.
The song begins with the lines “all that I want, is to know undoubtedly, that you just have eyes for me, could you make it clear?” This is the first time the narrator explores their partner’s actions, or lack thereof. This could be in regards to the dynamic with the other girl in “my way” or perhaps the partner has wandering eyes, which is suggested in “the cure” music video.
Followed by the lyrics, “All that I want is to sit here silently / And watch movies on tv / What a shame you’re not here / Here to witness my devotion / And my endless well of needs / I’m an anchor in the ocean / you know I could never leave,” calling back to “maggots for brains” and the desire for their partner to be there with them. However, unlike “maggots for brains,” the above lyrics are explicitly negative.
This then goes into the chorus, “So I’m patient, you’re learning, pretend it’s not hurting / They say it’s a virtue to not let good love slip away / So, I’m cool and forgiving, I’ll take what you’re giving / But nothing’s quite enough when I know that to get it I begged,” the narrator admitting to suppressing their emotions and why.
The second verse begins with “I have this thought when I lay in bed at night / That I feel trapped inside my life,” a similar feeling of not having control over one’s life is expressed in a prior track “making the bed” from GUTS: “Every night I wake up, from one recurring dream, I’m driving through the city the brakes go out on me.”
All of this leads back to “stupid song,” where the narrator deplores that same metaphor, “I’m a car speeding down the boulevard without a brake,” but unlike “making the bed,” “stupid song” romanticizes the concept of losing control, until that romanticization changes to the narrator feeling trapped.
The second pre-chorus then states, “I’m overwhelmed, I’m underfed / And yet I still cling / Cling to hope like snow on mountains / Careless words melt it away / I’m a penny in a fountain / just waiting on my luck to change.”
These lyrics correspond with the simile in “honeybee,” “It feels like God threw me a bone,” comparing the relationship with the idiom “threw me a bone,” to express that they’ve been granted relief; a change of luck. Which then in “begged” appears to be more like wishful thinking, like throwing a penny in a fountain.
This is further exemplified as hope is a central aspect of “honeybee,” which in “begged” has become something the narrator now clings onto.
All the signs of how the relationship would end has been foreshadowed in passing since “drop dead,” but it is not explored because those feelings were being romanticized until “begged,” which then directly leads into “what’s wrong with me.”
The tenth track of the album acts as the tipping point, where all the doubts and emotions that had been suppressed or overlooked are brought forth.
The first chorus of the song builds to this tipping point, “I’m just staring at the ceiling / Can’t describe this feeling I’ve got in my head / I’m out of body in my bed / And I’m just searching up my symptoms / Desperate to fix ‘em.”
The narrator not knowing why they are feeling these symptoms depicts the suppression of negative emotions because those symptoms have been following the narration since the start of the album but never explored.
To elaborate, the symptoms she lists are: (1) “I’m not feeling like myself,” the loss of identity is first exemplified in the chorus of “stupid song” and magnified in “maggots for brain”; (2) “Every movie that I see makes me cry,” this can be interpreted in two ways either a reference to “begged” where the narrator expresses wanting to sit silently and watch movies but her partner is not there or the ability of art to highlight thoughts that one may hide from themself; (3) “It’s like somebody put a weight on my chest,” this is a common idiom related to feeling anxious and while the anxiety and doubt have been persistent, they have also been overlooked. As well, it could also be a continuation of the metaphor “My heart is full of doubt,” in “the cure,” to mean the doubt is becoming too heavy; (4) “My head is spinning and my stomach is sick,” the sickness in her stomach is mentioned in the first track, “And I feel like I might throw up, left hook, right punch to the gut,” but it is not explored and the entirety of “maggots for brains” explores feeling physically and mentally sick when their partner is not there; (5) “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep,” which recalls the lyrics, “Seven nights alone and a skipped meal, I’m sleeping in my dress and my high heels,” from “stupid song.”
Then, there is the climax, the realization, “Say I’m in love so it’s hard to admit / I think you’re what’s wrong with me.”
Which goes into the second verse with the narrator “looking for distractions,” and continuing to cling to hope that “the feeling passes,” but also admitting that “it’s getting harder every day / head just keeps on pounding with the simple thought / what if this isn’t what I want,” and finally, the thoughts that had been suppressed have surfaced in their entirety.
The eleventh track picks up right where “what’s wrong with me” leaves off, the narrator is on the “edge of the bead / body and head protesting / my stomach’s in knots, I don’t want to talk / […] maybe it’ll fix itself tomorrow / but I’ve been saying that like every night.”
Even with the realization of the flaws in the relationship, the wishful thinking remains that all of this will fix itself. As well, the narrator not wanting to talk is not a symbol of them wanting to break up, as they have explicitly stated in the “honeybee,” “even when I’m quiet, I love you baby, I promise.”
However, their partner misunderstands their silence as a point of no return rather than a plea to fix it or believes they are not suited to fix it, so they “do the noble thing and open up the door.” This idea of nobility is satirical, as the narrator does not want the relationship to end, further emphasizing that in “cigarette smoke”: “I resent you for not being brave.”
The wishful thinking persists as the narrator writes, “if loving me means letting go and wishing me the best, well then I guess, I wish, I wish, I wish, you loved me less.”
Then, there’s the honesty factor again in the second verse, where the narrator tries to deflect the actions or inactions of their partner, “maybe I’m just a stubborn overthinker / but I’ve been thinking over this a lot / and I could try convincing you they’re just intrusive thoughts.”
But unlike before, the thoughts can’t be excused or overlooked as both the narrator and their partner know the reality of the situation: “you’ve seen me truly happy, so you know right now I’m not.”
Thus, the relationship comes to an end.
The next track, “expectations,” follows the narrator’s self-realization and recognition that they deserve “more and more and more and more and more,” as they summarize the relationship as “past mistakes are just new information.”
The three-minute and forty-two-second breakaway from sadness quickly comes to a halt and goes into “cigarette smoke.”
The final track is essentially a reflection on the relationship and what the narrator regrets, like “how long [they] stayed” and “what [they] let slide,” referring to all of the emotions that had been suppressed to make the relationship work.
The role of the narrator’s self-realization in the relationship can be further inferred from the line “you said that I made loving look easy / ‘til I made it hard.” It was easy when the narrator was letting everything slide and overlooking any negative feelings they had towards the relationship, and hard once they started exploring those feelings.
With that honesty, the song continues to address things that were previously suppressed and how that led to resentment, like their partner “not being brave” enough to fight for the relationship or to stand up for the narrator unless they begged, as well as for “taking her side.”
It all then boils down to the narrator asking her partner to “tell me something honest, so the memories go dark,” asking for a reminder of the reality of the situation and not just what was romanticized, and that reminder ultimately is the album itself.