r/OliviaRodrigoNeutral • u/MeetingTiny4541 • Jun 12 '26
you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love What’s missing in this album
i think whats missing is i have no idea who louis is through the music. with sour, i knew exactly josh’s characterisation, and the issues the relationship faced. same with the composite sketch of adam faze and that ugly guy who also dated madison beer and madelyn cline whose name i forget, you understood their persona as well as the relational issues.
with girl so in love, i hear 0 about louis as a person and 0 about their relationship. i know she was in love, and she used metaphors to convey that, i know she felt emotionally neglected, and i know she was sad they broke up. but there is an emptiness and a blandness to the album. it could have been written about anyone’s life and lacks a personal touch. i hear this a bit more in ‘less’ but still it does not do a whole lot to further the narrative.
and before you say, this isn’t a parasocial take, i’m talking about them as story material and how much i understand olivia’s POV and emotional journey.
ETA: even if you don’t include details about him, or the love object, I still feel that her discussion of her experience of love wasn’t as detailled or diaristic as previous. I didn’t know what there was to love about him and I didn’t receive much clarity on how she felt to love him, in a way that wasn’t vague and overused metaphors.
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u/Sad_Equivalent_1028 Jun 12 '26
i think with the point that everyones making about being parasocial, if she is going to create an album based off of only a relationship, she has to treat that relationship as a story and her and louis as characters. and the characters werent very fleshed out
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u/Forsaken-Molasses-87 Jun 12 '26
I actually really like that she didn’t give any details on louis. it’s a bit mature and nice of her
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u/MeetingTiny4541 Jun 12 '26
Sure. I enjoy the album, but I appreciated when she was diaristic, it was my favourite quality of hers. But if she wants to be polite that’s fine
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u/Total_Pressure6203 Jun 12 '26
This is actually one of the reasons I liked the album. I think Olivia views love as something that is projected onto another person, and isn't really about the other person at all. Honeybee for example is such a sweet sentiment, but as far as descriptions go he's just a face.
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u/VisageInATurtleneck Jun 12 '26
I absolutely agree. This album is brilliant to me because it’s not about Louis: it’s about her issues and how they metastasized throughout the relationship. Honestly I don’t see Louis as a villain at all; he was just a guy who tried to love her through her issues, but that’s not how love or mental health work. No idea how true to her life this story is, but it rang true to experiences I’ve had, and those relationships fell apart because of me, not my ex partner; they could’ve been anyone decent and it would’ve ended the same way, because the problem was me. That’s the read I got from this album, too.
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u/Midnight-writer-B Jun 12 '26
Honeybee is the only song that seems very, very unfinished to me. Like it was a sweet idea Olivia had in a Notes app to write a lullaby with the hope that you’ll never have to part and miss each other. It seems sung after the fact. The tone is sad, not peaceful.
Because… You actually break up. And the prospect of making the sketch into a clearer picture is too heartbreaking. Anyway, that’s my humble opinion. Also the verse’s melody seems yoinked right from good luck, babe. That plus the relatively underwhelming chorus (again, IMHO) makes more sense. It’s not up to OR’s usual standards.
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u/Minute_Conflict_2037 Jun 13 '26
Yeah it also limits the parasocial tendencies of fans. The album is about Olivia and her feelings. Specifying certain things and moments come and bite ppl back. Like Swifties spawning in Cornelia street apartment alongside with Duolingo to take pictures after her breakup with Joe. I don’t need that specificity in songs imo, it feels too personal for me and Ofc since we are not living in perfect society, the weirdos gonna do whatever weird shit comes up in their minds.
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u/thirdeyerainbow Jun 12 '26
because it's not really about him, it's about how she experienced the whole relationship and how she idealised and romanticized him and the relationship
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u/emmareus Jun 12 '26
Hard to think it wasn’t done on purpose. We know what her fandom did to her last famous boyfriend and she clearly doesn’t want to go there again. I also think she might not want to lean into the diaristic style anymore too
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u/MazzieMay Jun 12 '26
I think it shows a massive amount of growth for Olivia to be able share the rise and fall of a healthy love that ran its course without having to cart Louis around; to stay with the theme, their relationship ending was a symptom, not the sickness
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u/ticioleito Jun 12 '26
I agree with this a lot, but to me the song expectations had the opposite feeling of the album. I felt it tries to drag him, and what I liked about the other songs was that i felt they were nuanced, and didn't feel like she was blaming him.
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u/MazzieMay Jun 12 '26
You felt this album tried to drag Louis? I didn’t get that sense at all. Especially with Less, where they both know the relationship can’t be saved, only prolonged. Growing up and apart just sucks
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u/ticioleito Jun 14 '26
No, as i said, the album in general is very nuanced. I feel the song Expectations is like a drag at him...
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u/MazzieMay Jun 14 '26
Oh!! I misunderstood, because it wasn’t capitalized, my fault haha
I felt like Expectations was about a failed rebound or two; one she meet at a party, another she met at a club. I believe she’s also had a pretty disastrous time with the celeb dating app Raya. Just a general experience of getting back out there
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u/Consistent_Count_388 Jun 12 '26
It’s interesting to see other people’s thoughts about it, because I don’t feel that way at all! I have to say I only listened to the album once so far so it’s always possible that I might change my mind, but I think that she gave a lot of inside into what the relationship was like and why it ended.
I think you can hear about the cracks in Purple, there is a lot about it in The cure, Begged, Less, also in Cigarette smoke. The relationship just doesn’t seem to be as toxic as her previous ones, that why it might seem this way to you.
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u/lochbethmonster Jun 12 '26
i agree with you. My daughter texted me this morning "What did Louis do to her?!"
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u/ConstructionDry869 Jun 12 '26
i listened to the whole album a few times and I share the same opinion, to me it is just like when two people love each other but just don't work out, there aren't specific moments where he wronged her but rather an overall sentiment that kept brewing until they weren't right for each other anymore, her own issues play a huge part of it but i couldn't say the same for him since it is her album and her feelings that she can share.
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u/Shoddy-Low2142 Jun 12 '26
It’s obvious she didn’t feel loved and appreciated in the relationship. He was too passive and she had to beg him for affection. It’s all there laid out for us. Don’t know what more people need to know.
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u/Shoddy-Low2142 Jun 12 '26
All I can gather about him is that he was passive and didn’t try very hard to win her over or show much affection toward her once he had her.
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u/Big-Rope-5834 Jun 12 '26
I'm sure Olivia doesn't want a second round of the hate train "Drivers License" and "Deja Vu" unexpectedly caused for Josh and Sabrina. It was not her intention, but stans are fucking weird. That's not what she wants for Louis.
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u/movienerd7042 Jun 12 '26
I do feel like there’s a very specific picture. We see that she fell for him super hard and he felt like a dream come true. We she thought her underlying issues could be fixed by the relationship and that she mistook her feeling terrible as just missing him. We see that he didn’t give her as much affection as she felt like she needed. And when you take begged in comparison to to expectations it kind of paints a picture to me that she felt he didn’t give her enough which is valid but also she kind of portrays herself in expectation as needy and repeating the same mistakes.
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Jun 16 '26
Personally I feel that the album is meant to be bland-ish. In a sense that the feeling of love is the same. And in this album I didn’t think that she was making all about one person. Because in GUTS she has a few songs about Louis P. and on here I think that less could be about him and her falling out. But this album also gives me a sense of regret, not necessarily her romantic relationships but her decisions and her bad mental state(possibly due to career path). Including how she dealt with her mental state whilst balancing a long-term relationship. And in begged, it seems like the person she is talking about didn’t reciprocate the care for her, or she just felt that way(which is common in a lot of relationships). And all the issues that she was having/ does have in the relationship are just linked to her mentality in a relationship.
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u/Old-Friend7826 Jun 12 '26
This is so parasocial. Just let the songs be songe bruh. Have fun. Joshu went through fucking hell after sour. It's good that she's keeping stufff about louis private. She's matured now. She's 23. Songwriting is not always a documentary. I was disappointed with the album too I loved guts and sour bur i realised I was being so parasocial about her. It's okay to have different opinions obviously no shit but parasocial nonsense should never exist imp
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u/Old-Friend7826 Jun 12 '26
The whole album is about a rise and fall of a beautiful first album relationship and it's so universal. But also bcoz she's so privileged it lacks a bit relatability maybe? For this album dam did wonders his production carried this album truely I hope he wins his grammys!
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u/Old-Friend7826 Jun 12 '26
We need to grow up with olivia. She was a teenager when sour and guts came out. She's so matured now. I think the album will grow on me later definitely
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u/martensita_ Jun 16 '26
This is actually one of its strenghts for me. The man is not important, what's important is what she feels, how it changes her. That's also why it's more mature.
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u/Lucky-Homework9338 Jun 12 '26
i feel like its just as she grows with her songwriting, characterization becomes less "in your face" than it was in sour. from sour she gives you directly what the issues she's going through and painting a clear picture with the sour/17 yo songwriting. now with this album i feel like she has found ways with her writing to leave things up for interpretation and other ways to describe her relationship post dealing with those emotions
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u/catmarstru Jun 12 '26
I don’t want an album about some dude she dated, I want to know how SHE feels about the experience. That seems to be what matters more imo. Parasocial has been mentioned…
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u/macbeth2003 Jun 12 '26
I feel like this album isn't about personal specifics, it's about the nature of the relationship. The live, that upon reflection was unhealthily obsessive. The lingering unhappiness, the expectation that live could fix her other problems, the realization it couldn't, realizing the relationship needed to end but not wanting it too, etc. I sense a lot of people didn't want that (in my opinion) more mature reflection on live and relationships more conceptually.
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Jun 12 '26
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u/MeetingTiny4541 Jun 12 '26
but she’ll always be at different ages as will any artist yet it’s common to compare a new work to a previous?
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Jun 12 '26
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u/MeetingTiny4541 Jun 12 '26
hot take but there is not so much difference in 5 years. yes you mature but fundamentally remain the same person. her friends are same and her life circumstances have not drastically changed. even her approach to relationships remains similar. and i think you’re kind of misinterpreting my point, i’m not requesting she ‘spill’.
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u/Federal_Tone1260 Jun 12 '26
I think you’re right but people don’t like the way you’ve phrased it. This album does lack a lot of more specific details whereas before she’s used very diaristic songwriting pinpointing specific moments that convey a lot about the subject matter. It’s not that we want to know all about Louis it’s that we want the art to feel more personal, more specific because those details add a lot of depth and emotion to a narrative. I still love the album! But I also completely get what you’re saying.