Every Olivia Rodrigo Song, Ranked

The most underrated highlight on Sour, a fantastic Fifties-syle doo-wop weeper with a mean streak. Olivia shows off her uniquely masterful flair for lines that come out of nowhere to deliver a sucker punch. No matter how many times you hear this song, there’s never any way to be prepared for the moment when she casually sneers, “Think of me fondly when your hands are on her.”Best line: “Do you tell her she’s the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen?/And eternal love bullshit you know you’ll never mean?”

The massive finale of Guts, a piano confession building up to climactic lighters-up choruses that lift off into grand Oasis-level rockingness. Olivia blows out the candles as she turns 20, singing, “I’m sorry that I couldn’t always be your teenage dream.” The title might be a shout-out to Katy Perry, one of her pop mentors, and another artist who followed-up her breakthrough hit album, One of the Boys, with a massive encore, Teenage Dream. (Katy sang “No regrets, just love,” but in Olivia’s post-teen nightmare, it’s more like no love, just regrets.) She’s got tough questions for the future, asking, “When am I gonna stop being wise beyond my years? And just start being wise? When am I gonna stop being a pretty young thing to guys?”Best line: “When does wide-eyed affection and all good intentions start to not be enough?”

“Look at you, cool guy” is one of the best taunts in any post-breakup song, ever. Carly Simon surely wishes she thought of that line for “You’re So Vain.” A great goth-inspired piano rant against a fame monster who tries out his vampiric tricks on the most vulnerable girls, “because girls your age know better.”Best line: “You sank your teeth into me/Blood sucker, fame fucker/Bleeding me dry like a goddamn vampire.”

“Good 4 U” was her third hit, after the huge surprise impact of “Drivers License” and “Deja Vu.” So people tried to prepare themselves for this. But “Good 4 U” was the one that really established Olivia as the all-purpose pop star of her moment, updating classic grunge feminist pop-punk for a whole new era. She goes for Nineties Alanis/Courtney/Veruca Salt realness, savaging a “damn sociopath” for the fatal mistake of pissing her off. After “Good 4 U,” nobody would ever underestimate her again.Best line: “It’s like we never even happened?/Baby, what the fuck is up with that?”

“I’m sensing some undertones” — now there’s a brilliant way to kick off a love story. Olivia gets her teenage kicks in a devilishly catchy Eighties synth-pop bop about romantic obsession, the kind that you try to talk yourself out of in vain.Best line: “I’m sure I’ve seen much hotter men/But I really can’t remember when.”

“Logical” is the most powerful ballad on Guts. Like so many of these songs, it’s a story about a young woman getting twisted, molded, and humiliated by a “master manipulator” of an older man. Rodrigo’s voice shakes when she sings, “Said I was too young, I was too soft/Can’t take a joke, can’t get you off.” Best line: “Loving you is loving every argument you held over my head/You brought up the girls you could have instead.”

What an unrelentlessly hardcore rock & roll anthem. Olivia jumps out of the speakers, demanding some answers: “I’m so sick of 17/Where’s my fucking teenage dream?” She stands in the punk-rock tradition of Poly Styrene, who would have loved this song. You go right on refusing to enjoy your youth, Olivia. Parallel parking is overrated.Best line: “Ego crush is so severe/God, it’s brutal out here!”

A perfect theme song for the Guts era, with the righteous bravado of her riot-grrrl rock heroes in Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. This pop-punk rager begins the album the same way “Brutal” begins Sour, except Liv’s a little bit older and a lot more brutal. She isn’t trying to keep a lid on her attitude here, or her mouth — she doesn’t even get 30 seconds into the album before she’s boasting, “I’ve got the sun in my motherfucking pocket.” Rebel grrrl, you are the queen of my world.Best line: “I know my age and I act like it/I got what you can’t resist/I’m a perfect all-American bitch.”

A Joan Jett-worthy guitar tantrum, with some of Olivia’s shadiest shade: “He had an ego and a temper and a wandering eye/He said he’s 6-foot-2 and I’m like, dude, nice try.” When she sings, “I wanna meet his mom, just to tell her her son sucks,” that is some zoomer-Joni level shit. (On Blue, Joni Mitchell has an extremely similar conversation with Leonard Cohen’s mom, but not in those words.) Famous last words alert: “I am my father’s daughter, so maybe I can fix him?”Best line: “I wanna key his car, I wanna make him lunch.”

Olivia seemingly blew in out of nowhere — well, out of High School Musical — to hit Number One with her instant-classic debut single, “Drivers License.” It is one of those rare songs that you hear the first time and within a minute, you know this is a full-on classic you’ll keep singing forever. Olivia sings about driving past her ex’s house like nobody else in history has ever done this before — and when she’s singing about it, she’s right. An absolute classic, now and forever.Best line: “Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me/Because you said ‘forever,’ now I drive alone past your street.” 

What an impossible battle for Number One: “Drivers License” or “Deja Vu”? Two of this century’s biggest, best-loved, and just plain weirdest pop classics? But “Deja Vu” is the one, confirming Olivia as not just a bright young songwriter, but a whole new pop-queen paradigm. She and Dan Nigro plot every genius second of this down to the last micro-detail. Those Clash guitars. Those U2 drums. So many scream-out-loud punch lines. And the utterly insane way it’s about Olivia and her ex fighting over which one was into Billy Joel first. What a thrill to be in the crowd the night Billy and Olivia finally sang this together. And “Uptown Girl,” of course.Best line: “Play your piano, but she doesn’t know/I was the one who taught YOU Billy Joel!/A different girl now, but there’s nothing new/I know you get deja vu.”