On “Sour,” she actively questioned her girlhood. On “Guts,” her youth has begun to feel like a trap.
recently. The past few years have been an intense education in massive fame, societal expectations, double standards, and the pervasive scrutiny and role model-ification of young women in the spotlight. Meanwhile, she’s been turning 18, 19, 20 — these first years of being out on your own, free to play and fail and f*ck around. The sheer playfulness ofmakes it a standout album; not everything about being a woman, being a person, has to be so damn serious.
The album’s first of two fundamental thesis statements comes in “making the bed,” one of the most self-aware, grounded offerings from Rodrigo yet. In the sparse, clear-eyed ballad, she acknowledges that she’s the one who has been making the bed she now lies in; it’s not self-effacing, it’s just true. It’s ownership, acknowledging the power you have in your own life amidst all the thousands of things that might render you powerless.
There’s a sadness to leaving that kind of innocence, or naivete, behind. Nostalgia is powerful, easily and constantly rewriting our memories. It’s not, “I’m too tired to make food, too worn down by how hard it is to be a person, especially a woman, in the world.” It’s girl dinner! It’s not, “There’s no time to make healthy habits because I’m trapped in a capitalist hamster wheel that simultaneously demands my youth and my forever attractiveness to men.
Why go back to girlhood to have those feelings? We can have them now, whatever age we are, with whatever experiences we have or dream of having. We can have them whenever we listen to, but not simply because she’s young or only singing about young people things. Not discarding our teen years, but not overly romanticizing them or using them as constant justification to give yourself a f*cking break.
Rodrigo has long been skeptical of the teenage dream in her own life, but she fears the same things we all do, is afraid of the nostalgia trap of girlhood: “Will I spend all the rest of my years wishing I could go back?” She inclines her head toward us, understanding that her first recordwas a way to relive those terrible emotions of a heartbroken girl who just wanted to drive on her own to a first love’s house. This one, however, is an assertion of evolution.
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