In the run-up to today’s release, a lot has been made of Dazed cover star Olivia Rodrigo’s decision to forego her usual four-letter, all-caps album titles for the mouthful that is you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. But, having now heard the full project, the pivot makes perfect sense. Rodrigo’s bread and butter heartbreak anthems are still very much present here, but she now approaches them with maturity and a level of distance – situating these emotional payoffs within a wider sonic and narrative complexity. It’s a masterclass in storytelling, but perhaps the most compelling story of all comes from watching Rodrigo’s artistic development play out in real time. 

YSPSFAGSIL is an album told in two halves: the first charts her bright, headlong descent into love; the second captures the illusion-shattering reality that comes before a breakup. In true Rodrigo fashion, gut-punching lyrics abound – “Sometimes at a low point, I even wish for tragedy / ’Cause I know he’d come over and take real good care of me” – while she wears her influences proudly across the record’s 50-minute runtime, her longest yet. The album moves between yearning acoustic-pop ballads like “honeybee” and “begged”, and the neon-coloured New Wave tones of English bands like The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees on “maggots for brains” and “u + me = <3”.

Perhaps the clearest example of Rodrigo’s growth here is “my way”, a rebellious post-punk belter that casts her as raging against a girl she perceives to be stealing her man. On the surface, it could slot easily into either SOUR or GUTS. But here, she’s no longer simply screaming into the void: viewed within the album’s wider narrative arc, the track arrives with a sharper degree of self-awareness, set against the helpless infatuation that precedes it and the catastrophic fallout still to come. It marks a clear progression from the raw volatility of her earlier records.

And, of course, there’s “what’s wrong with me”, the first-ever feature on a Rodrigo album, with vocals from The Cure’s Robert Smith. The pair have an extensive history: Smith joined Rodrigo onstage at Glastonbury last year, they have gushed about each other in recent interviews, and Rodrigo pays homage to the English post-punk band throughout this latest project. So it’s particularly powerful to hear the two meet on equal terms on “what’s wrong with me”, layering their vocals into an intergenerational lament of heartbreak. It’s here that the project’s biggest achievement emerges: YSPSFAGSIL marks Rodrigo’s ascent from student of great singer-songwriters to one herself.

Below, we rank our five favourite tracks from Olivia Rodrigo’s third album, you seem pretty sad for a girl in love.

5. “HONEYBEE”

If YSPSFAGSIL is a movie (which it lowkey is), then “Honeybee” is Chekhov’s Gun. It arrives while Rodrigo is in the throes of new love, but rather than unbridled joy, it’s underwritten by a cold terror, telegraphing the tragedy to come and powerfully summing up the contradiction written into the project’s title. With lyrics like “I hope I never see what your face looks like going / A face I swear that I could spend my whole life knowing,” the track plunges into the emotional depth that makes a love song truly great. During a recent interview, Rodrigo shared that “one of the songs on the record […] reminds me of a song that people would play at their weddings,” and we think this is it. (SPM)

4. “STUPID SONG” 

Many Livies (myself included) were intrigued to see how Olivia – the high priestess of teen angst – would write about her first “adult” romantic relationship. We got our first taste of this new, happier era back in April with the release of the album opener, “drop dead”, an effervescent love song about a perfect first date. Track two, “stupid song”, continues in a similar vein – but it’s less rosy than “drop dead”, shot through with fear and anxiety, capturing the head-scrambling, stomach-churning feeling of wanting someone – badly. In her recent Dazed cover interview, Rodrigo revealed the album’s sound incorporated “string arrangements that are like your heart swelling, or the ups and downs of having a crush on someone”, and nowhere is this clearer than on “stupid song”. Lyrics-wise, Olivia sounds giddy, excited, exhilarated – but also plagued with a niggling fear that things could go catastrophically wrong (“I’m a car speeding down the boulevard without a brake”). With nailed-on lyrics like “I feel right, I feel wrong, I feel totally insane / And I want you more than any stupid song could ever say”, “stupid song” is an instant classic for anyone who has ever gone half-mad over a crush. (SS)

3. “U + ME = <3” 

YSPSFAGIL shines in its ability to situate emotional intensity within a wider complexity, and “u + me = <3” (along with gloriously delulu subsequent track “my way”) arrive at this narrative peak. Between its childlike, hand-drawn visualiser and naively loved-up lyrics like “I know everybody changes but I hope that we don’t” and “Carve our names in the car seat leather” it finds Rodrigo in romcom levels of infatuation. But the kicker is, it doesn’t last long. “u + me = <3” is the equivalent of Romeo and Juliet kissing on the balcony, or Heathcliffe and Cathy embracing on the moors – it’s so powerful because of everything that comes before and after. (SPM)

2. “WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME FEAT. ROBERT SMITH” 

Over the last year, Olivia Rodrigo has lived out a fan-to-friend pipeline you’d think could only exist in Wattpad stories. In her recent Dazed cover story, she described performing with Robert Smith at Glastonbury as “one of the happiest and proudest moments” of her career; last week, the duo took to the stage again at Primavera, this time to debut their song “What’s Wrong With Me”. The track is a hazy heartbreak anthem about trying to pinpoint the root of your sadness – “went to the doctor and she said I was fine” – only to realise the relationship is the problem. On the chorus, they sing: “My head is spinning, and my stomach is sick / say I’m in love, so it’s hard to admit / I can’t eat, I can’t sleep / I think you’re what’s wrong with me”. On the album, the song sits in the second half, cushioned between slower, more introspective tracks. But Smith’s verse breaks it out of the “sad girl pop” box Rodrigo and her peers are so often placed in. If a 23-year-old pop star and a 67-year-old music legend from entirely different worlds can still be bound together by the universal language of heartbreak, then maybe it’s simply a really good song. (HD)

1. “MAGGOTS FOR BRAINS”

As Rodrigo told Dazed recently, she was going for an 1980s New Wave sound with this album, and we think this song is the strongest example of that, blended with her own distinct sensibility. While The Cure are an obvious touchstone, the guitar riff here reminds me more of early New Order (a song like “Age of Consent”, for example), and it works really well: the music has a bright, wistful, slightly giddy quality which contrasts with the darker lyrics. In other words, it sounds exactly like pining for someone you’re crazy about, and despite lines like “everything feels mouldy like the fruit that’s in my bridge”, I wouldn’t say it’s a sad song. It also has one of Rodrigo’s strongest ever choruses – there is something incredibly satisfying about the way she sings “when my baby goes away!” As with much of the album, she’s tried something new, and it’s worked out really well. (JG)