When you’re extremely successful at doing something, it can be stressful thinking about what’s next, especially when you accomplish that success at such a young age, like singer and songwriter Olivia Rodrigo did on her first album, Sour, and her second album, Guts. That worry is something that Rodrigo herself has addressed in the 2023 Guts closing song “Teenage Dream,” when she sings “Got your whole life ahead of you, you’re only 19 but I fear that they already got all the best parts of me,” in the song “Teenage Dream.” She doesn’t have to worry about that, especially after the release of you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, the singer’s third studio album. The album, which was released on June 12, is quite possibly Rodrigo’s best work yet.
The album is split into two distinct parts: “Girl So in Love,” which comprises the album’s first seven tracks, and “You Seem Pretty Sad,” its final six, which represents the confessional storytelling in the album that Rodrigo has become so beloved for.
Kicking off the love-filled first section is the album’s leadoff single, “drop dead.” The song, which was released April 17, is one of the highlights on a pretty outstanding album. The synth-heavy track chronicles the development of a crush, and the first inkling of infatuation, as Rodrigo sings “One night I was bored in bed and stalked you on the internet.” It’s a fun, infectious and deeply relatable song, and serves as the perfect opening track to the album.
“drop dead” also references the song’s subject knowing all the words to “Just Like Heaven,” one of the best singles ever released by The Cure (the iconic British rock band, but also the name of a song on you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love), for a bit of foreshadowing, because in one of its truly exciting moments, the album has a feature from The Cure frontman Robert Smith, fittingly in the “You Seem Pretty Sad” part.
Smith, who performed with Rodrigo at Glastonbury Festival in 2025 and Primavera Sound earlier this year, is a perfect fit on “what’s wrong with me,” a heartbreaking song about realizing that a relationship is the source of all of the singer’s pain, rather than a positive thing in her life. If the volume on Smith’s vocals in the song’s chorus was a bit louder, and he sang the first verse instead of Rodrigo, it could easily be a song by The Cure.
One of the best songs on the album, even according to Rodrigo herself, is “the cure,” the album’s second single and a high point in Rodrigo’s career thus far. The melancholic song, which harkens back to some of the best moody ’90s alt-rock, serves as the tonal shift of the album, and is about finding out that a relationship isn’t the cure to problems, and in fact, may be the problem.
Another highlight is “expectations,” a bouncy and extremely fun synth-heavy song in which Rodrigo outlines her new expectations for any future romance, saying she’s not going to meet her future husband at “this bar in Silver Lake.”
Rodrigo is never really thought of as a rock star. Maybe it’s because she’s a woman, or because she’s young, but anyone who is denying her that title after this album is sorely mistaken. The singer is so commanding of so many facets of the rock genre throughout the album, like booming guitars and a punk rock attitude in the songwriter’s lyrics. It’s also innovative—bringing an orchestral mix to a song that could just be an acoustic ballad makes “the cure” a true standout.
In support of the album, Rodrigo is embarking on The Unraveled Tour, which will see the singer performing 86 shows throughout late 2026 and early 2027, including multi-night runs at Inglewood, Calif.’s Intuit Dome, New York’s Barclays Center and London’s O2 Arena.
you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is available on all streaming platforms.
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