Sour

Sour doesn't try to be "the next" anyone; instead, Rodrigo distills her life and her listening habits into powerful, hooky pop that hints at an even brighter future.

Nuanced and often exceptional debut album. ... Songwriting flourish is emblematic of what Rodrigo has learned from Taylor Swift on this album (which, in shorthand, is Swift’s debut refracted through “Red”): nailing the precise language for an imprecise, complex emotional situation; and working through private stories in public fashion.

The good news is, a lot of the until-now-unheard tracks from “Sour” are even better than the three tracks that have already been out there. ... You’ve got to admire her commitment to keeping with the title emotion and not having even a single romantically un-spurned song, for variety or anything else. It’s some grand lemonade. ... Ridiculously good.

Her combination of sweet melodies and bitter moods, her conversational flow, and her self-awareness are all skills many songwriters twice her age would love to call their own, and they make Sour a well-rounded emotional journey and strong debut album.

By the end of the album, Rodrigo has established her voice and showed listeners that she's not afraid to be vulnerable. SOUR is a strong debut that vividly illustrates the beautiful chaos of being inside a teenage girl's brain.

The pop ingenue’s impassioned, sassy and highly satisfying debut album.

Half wallow, half messy I-don’t-need-you self-care, Sour is the perfect first breakup soundtrack from a hugely promising new talent.

The referents are hipper than with previous Disney stars looking to break out of the Mouse House, and the language is coarser with F-bombs dropping every few tunes. There’s nothing offhand about these songs, though; each has been worked to a kind of exquisitely scuffed polish that suits the album’s hall-of-mirrors vibe.

Sour is a melodramatic pop opera of broken teen dreams: right now, it puts Rodrigo in the driver’s seat, and woe betide anyone who gets in her way.

For the most part, Rodrigo has passed the bar she set on that single [‘drivers license’], sharing with us an almost-masterpiece that’s equal parts confident, cool and exhilaratingly real. This is no flash-in-the-pan artist, but one we’ll be living with for years to come.

She has a knack for building tension, crescendoing her voice and emoting her words to a point where it almost rings as euphoric.

A collection of polished, precociously accomplished pop that doubles as one of the most gratifyingly undignified breakup albums ever made.

Just as “Deja Vu” and “Good 4 U” proved Rodrigo was going to be much more than a one-and-done phenom with a viral hit about careening through heartbreak, Sour confirms this is just the start of her story, where she expertly rides the wave of teenage turbulence and emotional chaos down any road she chooses.

When it works, it really works.

‘Sour’ is the sound of a bold talent operating on their own terms – potent in its execution, revealing in its lyricism, it’s a record that finds Olivia Rodrigo effortlessly claiming her status as pop’s newest icon, and one of its bravest voices.

Sour, for the most part, is a pop album that dips its toes into the alt-pop and bedroom pop subgenres, specifically spending most of its time in the latter. ... Rodrigo's lo-fi deep cuts that were made in the shadow of "Drivers License" can sound a bit repetitive. Her craft as a songwriter is especially evident on tracks like "Enough For You", "Happier", or "Hope Ur Ok", but the acoustic complexion these songs were going for could have benefitted from a bit more background noise.

The matter of failed romance is central to Sour, a nimble and lightly chaotic grab bag of breakup tunes, filled with both melancholy and mischief.

Like Eilish and Lorde before her, Rodrigo possesses both a knack for stealthy pop hooks and a vocal control beyond her years. And even if Sour doesn’t quite transcend its myriad influences, it might at least inspire her fans to Google the Piano Man.