You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love: What Olivia Rodrigo’s New Album Can Tell Us About Self-Love in Relationships

Undoubtedly, Olivia Rodrigo is this decade’s pop icon. If you don’t believe it, maybe after reading you’ll be convinced. Only being 23, she’s been able to perfectly capture the feelings of love, insecurities, friendships, and jealousy perfectly. Her latest album that came out, You Seem So Sad For A Girl So In Love, was her long anticipated third album that definitely did not disappoint.

The title in itself is a great theme that is common, but not talked about enough. I’m in a relationship that I enjoy, yet why do I still feel depressed or unfulfilled? These feelings are sometimes hard to put into words. You have something that looks good on paper, but yet you feel hollow. 

Her album is chronologically ordered to match the timeline of a relationship, from the first date, to your lives being intertwined, to the two individuals growing apart. The album is split into half: the first couple of songs being the girl so in love, while the other half of the album is the girl who seems pretty sad. 

The beats are catchy, but also gut-wrenching, but the lyrics truly provide such a nuanced look on self-love and fulfillment in relationships that is worth exploring. 

Drop Dead

This first song on the album is the perfect love song. “It’s feminine intuition ‘cuz I always had a vision of us standing like this,” she sings. She perfectly encapsulated the rush and happiness you get after meeting someone that could possibly be your person. That excitement is unlike no other, and it happens so quickly you might possibly “drop dead.” This happiness is real, and it’s worth honoring regardless of any outcome of a relationship. 

Stupid Song

This song captures the experience of having a perfectly ordinary moment, but you can’t escape the warm feeling of new love. New love transforms the ordinary into things with meaning. But it is important to note that love that is so consuming can also make us lose track of ourselves in the process. 

Honeybee

Honeybee is the stage of the relationship where everything feels sweet and effortless. She sings about how she never wants to see what her partner’s face looks like leaving. It’s the quiet love, where she admires him from afar. But again, it’s important to know that sometimes, just because something is sweet in the moment, a lot of it can be overwhelming. 

Maggots for Brains

This song perfectly captures the longing in a relationship, possibly separation anxiety. When there’s distance from the person you love (physical or even emotional!), everything can start to lose color. The world can appear flat and dull around them, especially when they help make everything colorful again. But this can easily slip into codependency. It’s important to think: Does this person help enrich my life, or am I disappearing without them? 

U + Me = <3

This is the perfect couple song. The math for “forever” perfectly makes sense. There’s something beautiful about adding up your lives together, learning about each other’s pasts, important people, and integrating yourself into each other’s lives. It’s truly a gift loving someone with your entire heart. You feel as if your old trauma is being healed from the wonderful love you are experiencing, just from the small moments with this person. The future is real. 

My Way

This is where jealousy in the relationship can start to seep in. “My Way” shows the moment insecurity shows up as defensiveness, and the need to fight to hold on to what is yours. This doesn’t mean you’re an aggressive person, rather it’s protectiveness to prove that your relationship is solid and there are no cracks. It can look like confidence and arrogance from the outside, but really it’s fear that the relationship may not be going as smoothly as you thought it would. 

Purple

Olivia Rodrigo herself said she originally wrote this song as a pure love song, but rewrote it to accurately describe the dangers of losing yourself in a relationship to be more raw and honest. She’s blue, and her partner is red, and together, she sees the world in purple. But somewhere along the way, her own sense of identity has started to blur at the edges. This is one of the quieter risks of love that isn’t talked about, but is an important part of healthy relationships.

At the end of you, she starts saying “melts with you till it all turns black,” instead of purple, signifying when the love starts to become obsessive rather than intersected. Maintaining a strong sense of who you are is something that is key to a loving relationship, separate from your partner. Just because you find your values individually does not mean you are careless, rather it helps make your love sustainable. 

The Cure

This song is one of the most emotionally honest moments in the entire album. It was as if we got to read an entry of her diary, but this feeling is something a lot of us maybe can relate to. This song captures the hope that true love will fix what is broken inside. That finally, being chosen by someone will finally make us feel like we’re enough, and that we belong.

Although love is such a beautiful feeling, our healing journey isn’t from someone else. We think that old wounds can be fixed with the right relationship, but truly, it’s our own journey and path that we need to explore by ourselves. Maybe it’s in therapy with self-care techniques, but the pain we feel inside is the work that we can only do for ourselves.  

Begged

“They say it’s a virtue to not let good love slip away.” This is the chapter of staying too long, but wanting to keep it because this relationship isn’t something that should slip away. Olivia Rodrigo depicts the rawness of fighting too hard for something that’s giving less and less, but you fear that letting go would do a lot worse than staying in a relationship that doesn’t value you back. A lot of people recognize this feeling, the hope that it’ll all go back the way it used to, then speaking about it, then the compromise, but nothing changes.

You find yourself ruminating, what went wrong, or what you did wrong, but sometimes the answer is never simple. Sometimes it can be nothing. It’s a short, and unsatisfying answer, but life truly gets in the way, and things aren’t meant to be. But it never means you were foolish for loving the way you did, it’s just what you wanted to fight for. 

What’s Wrong With Me

This epic collaboration with The Cure’s Robert Smith brought him out of retirement! This song describes someone facing these overwhelming feelings of sadness but not able to pin-point it. Robert Smith sings the other side of the relationship while Olivia sings hers. They both say the same thing, but in different ways, showing that the relationship has been more work than easy for both of them, and that their issues are not one-dimensional. 

Less

The relationship is getting too much, she keeps crying and she keeps promising her partner that they’re just “intrusive thoughts” she says in the lyrics. But what does this mean? This entire album might be hinting towards relationship OCD, where one seeks constant reassurance to solve the what-ifs about their relationship that keep floating in their mind. She wishes that her partner loved her less, because if he did, then he would stay with her rather than leaving because he couldn’t stand to see her suffer. 

Expectations

Olivia Rodrigo wrote this as a mantra song. “I’m not settling for a guy with a fake job,” or “past mistakes are just new information, these days I’ve got expectations!” This song is about letting go, but coming back stronger than ever. She doesn’t want to settle, rather she wants the best for herself and focus on her needs. She’s grown and she knows her worth! 

Cigarette Smoke

Cigarette Smoke serves as a goodbye song. The relationship still lingers on her like scent on clothing, but she understands that they weren’t the perfect couple. And if they were to be in a relationship that works, both parties need to fight for each other, not just one partner. She gets angry that he took her side to keep the relationship going when they both knew it was near the end. She wants her time back, and she’ll give his heart back. But ultimately, this relationship will be a memory now forever.  

This nuanced and raw writing of Olivia Rodrigo’s is incredible and is an amazing insight for anyone who is going through similar situations. This album isn’t just either love or breakup, rather it has everything; all the intense emotions that are in the highs, lows and the lessons. 

Love is important, but respecting ourselves is pivotal into our self-growth that will last us the test of time. 

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