Olivia Rodrigo's Newest Album GUTS Did The Unthinkable And Turned Me Into A Fan

Mat Hayward. Getty Images.

Apparently the VMA's were last night. Good, grand, lovely…another awards show where a bunch of 1% of 1%ers can wax poetic about how awesome they are to other 1% of 1%ers

Anyways, in the midst of what I believe I can safely assume was a bunch of smuggery, apparently Olivia Rodrigo pranked the audience of 1% of 1%ers by staging some stage malfunction: 

Hilarious! Actually pretty funny. Don't hate it at all and I'm not kidding. 

Seeing Rodrigo being the perpetrator reminded me to fire up her newest album, as it was begrudgingly on my to-do list as I co-host a music podcast with 3 musical genius for some reason and wanted to be able to give my shitty $0.02 to the fellas. On that note, subscribe to Barstool Backstage: 

Now I say listening to GUTS was "begrudgingly" on my list because artists like Rodrigo usually have music that doesn't resonate with me at all, being a 34 year old male and all. That said, Good For You is obviously a top 1 song of all time, arguably: 

Just kidding. It's objectively a great song though. Everyone knows that. 

I really don't know shit about music in the grand scheme of things though. Like at all. I know some classic rock and music history a little bit, but as a whole my knowledge doesn't compare at all to a guy like Dante or the guys I co-host Barstool Backstage with. 

I just know what I like, and I happen to like a lot of bands/acts that aren't always commercially popular or selling out stadiums on their own, but bands/acts that are more IYKYK bands. Bands like Marcus King, Tedeschi Trucks and shit like that. Acts that are huge in their own right, but not selling out Soldier Field. On the flip side, I tend to avoid music that seems to be bred in a petri dish somewhere in some Los Angeles or Nashville label's studio. 

Taylor Swift and the Foo Fighters not withstanding, of course. 

What I'm saying is this - I need instruments in my music and bands/artists to be better in person than when they're being piped in through ear buds. That's not to say I'm some asshole that says "today's music sucks", I'm saying a lot of "today's music" isn't for me. Obviously there are exceptions to that rule (goddamnit I love Good For You), but they're typically extreme exceptions. 

Take Olivia Rodrigo again. She has her aforementioned bangers out there, even I'm not stubborn enough to admit that, but as a whole it's just…blech to me, and a lot of my view of her stemmed from her performance of Driver's License on SNL a few years back and… yeah

…not good. At least I don't think so. Not gonna dismantle some young girl and say her music completely STINKS, but she's also one of the biggest names in music right now, criticism comes with the territory. I'll just say her music, thus far, was just not for me as a whole. Like I said, I need my music to sound awesome live for me. At that moment, her's didn't IMO.

But but but her newest album???

I just finished my second listen and it's fucking amazing. I'm throwing everything I just said into the trash because this album is a fan-fucking-tastic listen. 

In the end, all that matters is if you enjoy the sounds being piped into your brain and I very much enjoy the noises of GUTS being piped into my brain. Not sure if that sentence makes sense or not, but I think that's the simplest way I can put it. The album is awesome and she deserves all the credit in the world for turning at least one old asshole - me - into a fan while also receiving great critical reviews.

And on that note, I'll go back to stumbling upon artists like Eric Lindell or Joanna Connor until Olivia's next album comes out: 

More up my alley. Oh and BTW there's actually some decent guitar/piano in GUTS. Shout out to whoever Rodrigo's backing band was.