Anyone who has heard me ramble about pop music (hi, Mom) knows that, for the past year and a half, there is nothing I’ve wanted more than for Harry Styles and Olivia Rodrigo to come out with new music.
Styles and Rodrigo are, to me, two mainstream artists who make the most consistently catchy and sonically interesting music.
Across a two-year span where breakthrough artists like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan weren’t really clicking with me, and the rest of the charts were flooded with garbage, I desperately needed these two to break out of their years-long album droughts.
You can imagine my glee, then, when Styles announced his new album and dropped its lead single in January and released the rest of the album in March before Rodrigo announced her third album and subsequent lead single earlier this month.
It’s been repeated blows of happiness for the musical side of my brain, so I thought I’d share my joyous thoughts on what’s come of each of these projects so far.
I’ll start with Styles because his album news came out first and because I’ve not been nearly as in-tuned with his discography as with Rodrigo’s.
‘Harry’s House’ was the first Styles album I listened to, and when it was released, I wouldn’t have considered myself a fan of his. It was only when I discovered how much ‘Golden’ sounds like an Empire of the Sun song that I really started grooving with his aesthetic.
I listened to Styles’s lead single, ‘Aperture,’ for the first time only a few hours after its release, and I was immediately drawn in.
I love how the base of the song’s production is the vibrating bass thumping you hear when a car with their radio blasting drives by, with what feels like a million different synth riffs coming in and out at random. It reminds me of the Euro Mir theme, for the zero readers who know what that is.
And then, of course, there’s the chorus, where Styles shouting “WE BELONG TOGETHER” is absolutely infectious.
Overall, though, it’s crazy to me how ‘Aperture’ is meant to be a radio hit. It’s five minutes long and its funky production is almost abrasive. It’s not too surprising that the song debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, only to fall off immediately.
When the rest of ‘Kiss All the Time, Disco Occasionally’ (elite album title) dropped, I thought the beginning of the album kept up the momentum.
After ‘Aperture’ was ‘American Girls,’ the second single off the record. Like with ‘Aperture’, I also loved ‘American Girls’s’ messy, almost abrasive production and powerful, infectious hook.
From there, maybe I’m just a singles guy, but the rest of the album wasn’t very memorable to me. I really liked ‘Carla’s Song,’ the album closer, but everything else had me slightly less enthusiastic about Harry Styles than I was before.
Thankfully, especially in the realm of lead singles, Olivia Rodrigo doesn’t disappoint.
I’ve been on the Rodrigo train since ‘driver’s license’ became a meme and ‘deja vu’ became one of my favorite hit songs of the decade. Since then, I’ve listened to Rodrigo’s entire discography and even watched every episode of Bizaardvark.
While Rodrigo’s discography isn’t perfect, her lead singles have a magical quality to them. They’re the kind of songs where you remember where you are the first time you hear them.
This was the case for me with ‘vampire,’ and as for ‘drop dead,’ Rodrigo’s newest release, let me just say – it is immaculate.
Olivia Rodrigo hadn’t released new music in over two years, and literally the first thing she says upon her return is
“I know that the bar closes at eleven / but I hope you’ll never finish that beer.”
Brilliant, I’m in love.
One thing I adore about Rodrigo as an artist is how effortlessly funny she is. Unlike some other pop artists, who feel like they really want you to know when they’re making a joke, Rodrigo has a habit of singing deranged lyrics in the most non-chalant tone, only adding to their comedic impact.
In the chorus of ‘drop dead’, the opening line
“One night I was born in bed and stalked you on the internet”
comes out of nowhere, and the lead in from the second verse into the second chorus is very clever. She also randomly mentions she’s got chewing gum, which is fun.
My favorite moments of the song instrumentally are after the first chorus, where the instrumentation builds only to drop away, leaving just a bassline, percussion and a whimsical string melody. That and the guitar line after the bridge give me chills.
And, while Rodrigo’s vocal delivery isn’t the cleanest throughout, it’s those occasional moments of messiness that make ‘drop dead’ one of my favorite vocal performances from her.
Normally, Rodrigo sings about how her exes are “fame fuckers” or how she wants to die whenever she leaves her house because she’s just that bad at talking to people (so true, friend).
‘drop dead’ marks what might be the first instance, from my knowledge, of Rodrigo singing about being in love.
That passion shows in her delivery, especially in the high notes during the chorus, where it sounds like her falsetto is straining, but she’s just so lovestruck that it doesn’t matter.
While I personally found ‘Guts,’ Rodrigo’s second studio album, to be a downgrade from ‘Sour,’ her debut, ‘drop dead’ has me very excited for ‘you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’ (another elite album title).
The new album won’t be dropping until June. I’ll be studying abroad in England by then, so I hope I’ll be in a special place there because I have a feeling I’ll remember where I’ll be the first time I listen to it.
Coleman can be reached at [email protected].
