On her third album, Rodrigo leaves behind the gutsy pop punk that made her such an intriguing A-league popstar, but this expertly paced new LP features one of the finest hit singles of 2026 and proves Rodrigo doesn’t need her heart broken to write great pop.

It’s remarkable that more than three years had passed after Olivia Rodrigo’s rocket-fuelled debut single drivers license before she released her first love song (Obsessed, the pick of the bonus tracks from 2023’s phenomenal GUTS). For a while, Rodrigo defined herself as the queen of teenage heartbreak, first with the boundless melodrama of ballad-heavy debut SOUR, then with punky teenage angst on GUTS. It duly earnt Rodrigo a legion of adoring young female fans, who I witnessed last year in Manchester belt out every word of the debut hit’s colossal bridge as if this specific Californian’s devastation was their own. As Irish songwriter CMAT put it, “to bring the demon of a hypothetical future heartbreak out of a small girl is an important spiritual act”.

Rodrigo’s specialism in heartache was paying dividends, up until she started hitting it off with Louis Partridge in a pub in Manchester and she very inconveniently fell in love. Her cumbersomely titled third album therefore ventures deeper into love song territory, although Rodrigo is far too good a songwriter to churn out saccharine ballads filled with sweet clichés. In fact, all of the ‘love songs’ that make up the first half of this album come packaged with a sense of distant foreboding: stupid song’s ascendant chorus sees Rodrigo worryingly put the boy ahead of her love of music, honeybee is prematurely obsessed with his possible departure, and in maggots for brains the love literally zombifies her. The pick of the A-side is u + me = ❤, which knowingly addresses the sort of lovesick naiveté that was baked into SOUR a little less deliberately. “They say modern love’s a cruel endeavour / And to that I say fuck it whatever!” she exudes in the bridge, the carefree hook barely drowning out the troubling notion that this love might not really last “forever and ever and ever”.

And indeed it didn’t. Rodrigo has had no qualms in declaring this a concept album chronologically retelling the relationship, and purple is the story’s turning point (or, in love poetry terms, the volta). It’s one of Rodrigo’s most lyrically and musically interesting tracks to date, the vaporous organ chords never quite resolving, the words expertly teasing out a niggling feeling that this love affair’s co-dependency has become constrictive. “It’s crazy, I had big dreams ‘til I tied myself to you,” Rodrigo sings in a line all the more cutting for its off-hand delivery. From there on out, we’re back to vintage Rodrigo anguish: pretty but unexciting ballad begged, a gorgeous jazzy piano on tearjerker less, a climactic closing number with canny references to previous tracks and an admission that in the end she’s “so fucking lonely”.

It’s hard to overstate the unlikely influence the Cure’s Robert Smith had on Rodrigo after they performed together in a crowning moment of last year’s headline Glastonbury set. Not only does he become the first guest to feature on a Rodrigo album, but Cure-esque jangly guitars can be heard throughout you seem pretty sad, and one song is literally titled the cure. It’s a shame Smith’s featured track, what’s wrong with me, is such a dud; there’s no getting away from the fact this is a chalk-and-cheese vocal pairing, and Rodrigo’s uncharacteristically simplistic lyrics don’t give Smith much to work with. As for the cure, it’s no less than one of the finest singles of the year, an unflinching self-diagnosis of chronic heartbreak that showcases Rodrigo’s knack for choruses that feel like speeding down the motorway with the windows down. It’s a patiently paced single, clocking in at a relatively weighty five minutes, but the payoff is immense.

Some will bemoan the lack of grungy pop punk on this album that made GUTS such a singular thrill, with Rodrigo instead stepping back into safer 2020s pop territory, which is to say vague 80s nostalgia produced by and for a generation that weren’t even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes in the 80s. Still, it’s hard to dislike the unabashed kitsch of expectations, a synth heavy romp which takes its cues from today’s premier purveyor of unabashed kitsch, Chappell Roan. Lead single, by contrast, sounds like a Sabrina Carpenter song burdened with a flat-footed chorus melody, and reads like a too-considered (albeit successful) attempt at topping the streaming charts. At times, you seem pretty sad’s emotional and musical maturity makes you pine for the unfiltered adolescent woe of traitor, or brutal’s earnest anxieties about parallel parking. Rodrigo’s flair for writing songs layered with conflicting meanings remains stronger than ever, but when it comes to this popstar’s heartbreak-powered anthems, the first cut is the deepest.

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