The Atlantic
Olivia Rodrigo’s sharp debut album,
Sour, confirms that metaphor and ambiguity are so last generation.
Geffen Records
Great breakups aren’t just painful; they’re surreal—a space-time fissure, a smack from God, a bulletin that you’re not the world’s protagonist. Someone who was always there just vanishes. A future crumbles into a past. This is heavy stuff at any age but especially when you’re dealing with it for the first time, which means that some of the most mystic meditations on breakups have come from teen singers. “God only knows what I’d be without you,” the Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson sang, pining with curiosity, at age 19. “As real as it may seem, it was only in my dreams,” went the amazed 1987 chorus by the 16-year-old sensation Debbie Gibson.