Author Spotlight
Caroline Wood
If your 2021 wasn’t spent belting out the climactic bridge about red lights and stop signs then I don’t know what you were doing. This year, the hype has returned with the release of Olivia Rodrigo’s feature film on Disney+, “Olivia Rodrigo: driving home 2 u (a SOUR film).”
When I first heard Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license” playing on repeat at my house by my sister, I was filled with annoyance. I thought it was too dramatic and overhyped, but once sticker-covered Rodrigo dropped the album “SOUR” and I actually listened to the lyrics and soaked in the pop punk sounds, I became obsessed.
When “drivers license” came out, Rodrigo had just started her second semester of senior year of high school, and shortly after graduation her record-breaking album was released, going on to win her People’s Choice, MTV Music Awards and American Music Awards New Artist of the Year, Billboard’s Woman of the Year and received seven Grammy nominations.
Because of her rapid rise to fame — and history with Disney on shows like “Bizaardvark” and “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” — Disney+ decided to make a documentary telling the story of “SOUR.”
When I saw the teaser post for the documentary back in February, I raced to my sister’s room to tell her the news. Along with my obsession for the album came a longing desire to know what it was like behind the making of it as Rodrigo’s beautiful articulation of her powerful feelings is fascinating to me.
Rodrigo has a way of being brutally honest and open with her lyrics that fascinated me along with so many other teens going through similar struggles of fitting in or going through break ups and could relate to her words on a deep level.
The film follows Rodrigo on a road trip from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles where she wrote the album. Throughout the journey, each song from the album is discussed by Rodrigo in a private interview paired with never-before-seen footage from her recording studio where she and her producer Dan Nigro wrote and arrange the songs, then performed live by Rodrigo.
These performances were undeniably my favorite part of the documentary as I enjoyed seeing all of the different outfits and sets she chose for each song — whether it was “brutal” in an abandoned plane or “deja vu” on top of a convenience store.
Out of all the songs on the album I found “good 4 u” and “jealousy, jealousy” to be the best of the revamped performances because of the new takes it brought to them. Instead of the raging band backing “good 4 u,” Rodrigo shared a circular stage with a full orchestra in the middle of Red Rock Canyon State Park.
The orchestra’s grace and Rodrigo exchanging her voice from the song’s typical seething tone to something more composed and tranquil gave it a mocking bitterness masked by elegance. In contrast, Rodrigo embraced her touch of punk for the film’s rendition of “jealousy, jealousy,” performing it alongside her all-girl band with more passion than I’ve seen in any of her other live performances.
The behind-the-scenes recording studio footage allows the audience to see the discussions and decisions made when composing each song.
For the most part, the songs are inspired by Rodrigo’s devastating break-up at the time — speculated to be with Disney co-star Joshua Bassett although it’s not directly addressed in the documentary. Rodrigo opens up about how she was going through all of these strong emotions at the time and needed a friend to relate to, so she made one out of her music.
Bordering the territory of a concept album as a majority of the songs are about the same break up, you’d expect the narrative to grow tiring and repetitive, but Rodrigo takes a new heart-wrenching angle with each one executed through deep and raw lyrics. Whenever I’m feeling sad, heartbroken or angsty I pop in my “SOUR” CD and go for a drive.
“driving home 2 u” shows the devotion and persistence Rodrigo puts into her music and while an overarching theme of the album is heart-break and devastation, I look forward to seeing what’s to come from Rodrigo and hope she continues to write with that same passion, but hopefully has found some joy after the emotional closure “SOUR” gave her.
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