Olivia Rodrigo - You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/69ce96d85f00b67a0c52ea65/master/w_1600,c_limit/Olivia-Rodrigo-You-Seem-Pretty-Sad-for-a-Girl-So-in-Love.jpeg

you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love will be released by Geffen Records on June 12, 2026.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78wrful9cVU

A Cure reference, love it.

I like all those high harmonies. I have a Rodrigo-obsessed tween, so I'm going to hear it a lot this weekend...

It's a treat!

alright song but i hate the mix, it's super compressed and flat. there's a lot going on but you can't make out any of the details.

feels like it's going for a stylised lo-fi thing except like, why would you ever do that to a string-driven song like this?

there's also just not really any charm from putting cleanly-produced front & centre pop vocals over relatively lo-fi production

This song didn't give me the same rush as "Vampire " did or is in the same league as "Drivers License." It does have hooks and is fun. One listen in.

lucky for me all this Cure bullshit flies right over my head, otherwise LET'S GO

ok "Just Like Heaven" was a bit on the nose, even i get that

I like it. The loved up semi-spoken second verse is pure Don't Delete the Kisses.

why does this video look like someone left motion smoothing active on their TV

because it's 50fps

this is especially strange to combine with the vhs filter

Good single. I sat the last record out, but might have to give this one a shot.

Last record was better than the debut!

yeah, it's not for me, but I enjoyed everything I heard from it.

I liked a couple singles from the debut, and wasn't all that wowed by the ones I heard from the follow-up; thus, I suspected her of having a limited palette. I still sorta do, but the new one just sounded really nice and catchy to me.

ah to be young and in love. i love the versailles setting for the video.

This is really nice but not quite Guts-level nice yet, maybe

when she's fast she's good (now there's a new wave song title)

agree with that. the last album's rockers were awesome. the ballads were just OK. it was like two albums in one.

maybe i'm just impatient, though.

I really want to like this more than I do, because she's such a great performer and likeable personality, but this isn't grabbing me. But I preferred Deja Vu over Drivers License and I preferred Bad Idea Right over Vampire so I hope she keeps the pattern of saving the best songs for the second single

Why is she going so hard for the nonce market with the styling for this? Every time I see a promo or a post about it she’s wearing a little-girl outfit with her hair in pigtails and it really fucking sucks because her music has never been that vibe AT ALL.

Like I’m a little shocked nobody mentioned this aspect of the video ngl because it was not what I was expecting when I read “filmed in Versailles” and yes it’s more than a little gross!

https://i.postimg.cc/Kz86Z6zt/IMG-2929.jpg

^ comment not mine but otm re plausible deniability

song is a little stiff imo, still looking forward to the record

no opinion on whether she’s dressing up as a baby, mostly looked at the cover art and thought “oh i’d wear that dress,” i guess many people would consider me part of the problem

i know artists style themselves very intentionally in order to convey a narrative but i'm also wary of suggesting a woman is dressing to attract a certain kind of gaze

i was a little weirded out by the outfit tbf

xp uh

ok i'll drop out of this conversation

not gonna comment on the outfit but I will say I've always felt she serenades the Pop Needs Real Instruments Rolling Stone demographic, musically speaking

okay maybe I am gonna comment a bit. gyac otm - that she's gone this way in her aesthetics is an extremely unfortunate way to corroborate and build on what i've felt about her music

i liked her first album for what it was. fun pop punk. haven't listened to much subsequent stuff. this outfit is almost certainly intended to cause controversy, especially in this epstein zeitgeist, and i find that incredibly depressing and bleak.

kinda hilarious how public she's been about charting a course for her own aesthetic taste only to keep releasing lead singles that sound like taylor swift singles... the woman really loves taylor swift. i like this song well enough, i don't think it gives you much to chew on, it sounds a lot like taylor swift, tho it's actually better than most latter day taylor swift

Yeah, I had a similar impression of the song, the Taylor template and not so fresh now.

okay maybe I am gonna comment a bit. gyac otm - that she's gone this way in her aesthetics is an extremely unfortunate way to corroborate and build on what i've felt about her music

― imago, Monday, April 20, 2026 11:20 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i liked her first album for what it was. fun pop punk. haven't listened to much subsequent stuff. this outfit is almost certainly intended to cause controversy, especially in this epstein zeitgeist, and i find that incredibly depressing and bleak.

― treeship., Monday, April 20, 2026 11:53 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

ok, so, when i watched the video for the first time, i thought "that outfit looks really comfortable to sleep in" because it is a sheer soft-looking babydollish nightgown + bloomers, just the right amount of fabric to be enmeshed in when you're going to bed, and the vibe of the video was like "i am really excited about my crush in bed in the middle of the night but my bed happens to be in versailles," and i guess i've given you all of these impressions because none of them remotely entered the realm of "this looks targeted toward pedophiles," which, beyond that, i really don't give a shit how olivia rodrigo or sabrina carpenter choose to dress generally, let alone this way, but it's just hard for me to see it as "more than a little gross" because... who's being gross here? is there a direct causal link between women "dressing like babies" (which i've already established i don't think rodrigo is doing here) and csa? does it as i've seen in some corners of the internet "promote pedophilia"? i sorta think the more likely "promoters" of pedophilia in our world are, like, the existence of the catholic church and the nuclear family and a culture defined by male sexualization of women which targets them from the instant they're born. how women choose to dress in this environment is irrelevant to me because they will be sexualized no matter how they present themselves. i wear babydoll dresses because they make me feel nice and embodied and unfortunately i have no control over how men perceive me in that sort of outfit so i have to not care. and i'm sure olivia rodrigo as someone who came up as a disney teen star has felt this immediate, overwhelming sexualization from older men, and is familiar with it, and knows that she can't win, and chose to wear something cute and comfortable in her video

I guess that’s your conclusion. Thanks for the explainer as to how men sexualise women from the moment they are born, as though my conclusion wasn’t at least partially formed as someone who did have adult men making comments to me as a 12 year old in my school uniform. Having been a fan of Rodrigo for her previous persona in her music and how she’s presented herself publicly to date, it’s pretty fucking disappointing to have yet another female pop star lean into the sexy baby look. It’s worse when it’s singers like Olivia, Sabrina, and Ariana who have previously been pretty forthright about their adult sexuality. I don’t like it when grown women feel the need to portray themselves in this manner.

Thankfully we can assume that pop music never knowingly sexualises young women for profit, right?
https://i.postimg.cc/cHhvV3Sf/IMG-2943.jpg

I don't think there's any way for a woman to be the right kind of woman - you can't be too youthful because it's creepy but you can't be too old because you're past it, you can't wear make-up or have surgery because it's fake but you have to look nice and pretty regardless, and you can't be too passive but you can't be difficult, and you can't enjoy sexuality but you also cannot be frigid, and you can't play it safe and straddle the fence because then you're boring, and no matter what you do as a famous women you are always going to be told off for it.

I'm choosing to interpret the babydoll look as an homage to Courtney Love and Shirley Manson at their peak but I can see why it would make people uneasy here because Rodrigo isn't seen as that kind of woman.

gyac, i said all of that being aware of your experiences, and the "explainer" was more intended for the very stupid men who followed up your post. furthermore i do not understand what i'm supposed to see in that photo you posted

xp

xp Courtney and Shirley were wearing those babydoll dresses with cigarettes hanging from their mouths and smeared lipstick and with a heavy dose of irony. This is just the aesthetic without either the same irony or insight. It’s “Just A Girl” vs whatever Sabrina thought she was doing when she decided to sing “I’m full grown but I look like a niña.”

yeah but like, the discourse is not about whether it's insufficiently ironic. it's about how she's wrong and bad for targeting pedophiles

Maybe this isn’t a britney in the 90s thing idk. Just seemed like it.

she’s wearing a little-girl outfit with her hair in pigtails

but she's not doing that?

Yeah sorry my bad I mistook her headphones for pigtails in passing. She’s wearing a little girl outfit with headphones.

god not like this needs my input in any way, but i did feel a certain "ruling class fantasy" vibe from the video tbh. so youth objectification to the degree it's happening or not wouldn't exactly be a shocking accusation imo, it kinda tracks. on that level it does sound a lot like taylor swift.

tapping into the libidinal zeitgeist of the times, as fucked up as it may be, seems like a promising way to become a big star - i'm assuming that's the goal in this case.

i really don't give a shit how olivia rodrigo or sabrina carpenter choose to dress generally

nor do i

but this isn't about how they dress is it, it's about how they and their people have chosen to mediate them and their popstar status in their most prominent public communications of 2026

gyac aside here but men having extremely strong opinions on the appropriateness of a young woman pop star's clothing always strikes me as extremely weird and off putting, deep "the call is coming from inside the house" vibes

applies equally to both pro and con

i don't think a man w/o an opinion on this is projecting their own insecurities, weird personal history/opinions etc onto everyone else thru the medium of a female pop star's music video outfit...

if you can't see this hypecycle and its essentialism as one small part of an active, many-tentacled effort to manufacture consent with whatever america is being turned into then you're blind imo

I'm getting tired of this increasingly popular ILX line, i.e. "If you can't see the world in my essentialist way, then you are blind imo."

it is never just her agency though is it, she's part of Olivia Rodrigo the media phenomenon, it's a vehicle and it demands that decisions are made about presentation

it isn't a high level conspiracy, it's lazy if anything, falling in step with a culture of female infantilisation because that's selling quite well with various demographics rn

I mean the agency argument is not exactly flawless given that choice feminism (spit!) has women defending carrying out and performing shit that’s inherently misogynistic as empowerment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ OR would also be far from the first young woman to make a dumb choice thinking it was subversive.

legislation that disenfranchises women is being pressed forward. and now our prevailing popstars are playing directly into this theme of female infantilisation, because as wealthy megastars they are immune from whatever is being inflicted on girls and young women across much of the world right now.

sabrina carpenter's last two albums are essentially about how men being infants requires women to infantilize themselves, a lot of it is pretty great social commentary wrapped up in pop music. the idea that because she is wealthy she is immune from "whatever is being inflicted on girls and young women" rather than interacting w/ and commenting on that subject is directly refuted by the contents of the music, but of course you would need to listen to the music and not just critique its aesthetics in order to realize that

am I alone in thinking this aesthetic is nothing new for her?

So do you think this is this like a cindy sherman kind of inversion of patriarchal imagery?

i don't know this lady's music at all, is she jojo siwa-ing? if she's jojo siwa-ing or sydney sweeney-ing then sure i disapprove

if ilx has just discovered ageplay and is now talking about how Problematic it is, my eyes are going like regan's head from the exorcist

huge "frank zappa walking around with a cow in _head_" vibes

i _understand_ we live in deeply abusive patriarchal times and i _understand_ the people perpetrating this are essentially untouchable and boy women sure do make great proxy targets, don't we? none of _us_ are untouchable. we get touched quite a lot, actually.

I like rosrigo’s music and think she is talented and wish her well. I don’t want to get wrapped up in this. But in fashion, in pop music, in media, there is a tradition of using radioactive imagery to cut through the noise, but then falling back on plausible deniability, making the critics feel like they are crazy. I definitely think carpenter does this and it is cool the lyrics end up being feminist but i don’t think this obviates the general dynamic, which probably has more to do with the cesspool we call a culture than these artists in particular.

ok i will say this
an artist puts out an album where the cover depicts her dressed like a five-year-old in a "sexy" way

i get people being upset that nobody's talking about the music, that people who don't even fucking _listen_ to rodrigo (like me lol) suddenly show up with Opinions

i do agree with you, treesh, that the general dynamic is _not_ really something that is about rodrigo in particular. i do think it's important to talk about the general dynamic, which is that america is fucking pedotopia and how the fuck are any of us supposed to _behave_ given that, well, fact.

yeah pretty much :( though i feel like it's important to create a little space around that. not everyone is a child abuser. are there strong libidinal feelings associated with youth and sexuality in the general populace? yeah i think that's pretty undeniable. a kind of barbarism in sexuality never left us, for better or for worse, and i think it's here to stay at least as long as the planet tolerates us.

as sophisticated as lana del rey is - and i really do love her - i think a huge part of her success is also this kind of thing, plain and simple. she created art out of it.

corporate needs everyone in this thread to find the difference between this discussion and the geese fan bot discussion

no idea what that means.

I'd say Del Rey does something more similar to what was described above regarding Courtney Love and Shirley Manson: coming across as an adult playing with and processing that, like someone whose voice is shaped by what happened to them growing up. Someone last year (I think in print somewhere) noted that Chappell Roan was one of the few pop women writing songs from an adult perspective (do people still say "mature"?) rather than a more teenage view.

Del Rey seems to be going for a vintage 50s/60s Grace Kelly/fashion mag vibe on her album covers at least. Doesn't seem in line with what Rodrigo is doing in the video.

our prevailing popstars are playing directly into this theme of female infantilisation, because as wealthy megastars they are immune from whatever is being inflicted on girls and young women across much of the world right now

btw they are not immune. no woman is immune. please never talk about this subject again

prevailing popstars

also "right now" is just temporally incorrect. women have been dealing with this since uh the invention of patriarchy. epstein is not a unique and new phenomenon, and the way people have integrated this into their class analysis ignores that the same exact shit happens to women and girls behind closed doors in extremely mundane domestic lower class realms. it cuts across. women are still being killed every day by their cis male partners and it does not matter what position of the totem pole they occupy. i think it's important that women not flatter and cater to powerful men who enact this kind of violence just for their own tenuous grasp at power, yes, but it's hard for me to connect what olivia rodrigo's doing in the music video and on her album cover with that sort of dynamic, and frankly women can wear whatever the fuck they want i once again don't care. courtney love wore babydoll dresses "ironically" with cigarettes and smeared lipstick but also she looked fantastic in them and i know she knows that

i'd argue that ironic distance, or the artist having an adult take on the sexual power of their youth (which seems inevitable anyway - what artist doesn't have this - they aren't, after all, baby dolls even if they've been exposed to the archetype), does not erase the trace of that power in its basic form. ldr plays with starlet personas in her collage of american desire afaict. i'm not saying that every female pop star's success is about the sexual power of their youth in iconographic form, just that libidinal forces are there and powerful and play a part - and if this revive is any indication it tends to unsettle people - understandable.

i think there's a big difference between the repressive environment that ivy points out and the opening kind of phenomenon of being able to tap into sexual power in a safe way - through wearing an outfit for instance. the former (repressive environment) is what ends in violence and abuse. the latter allows people to understand themselves and humanity, have fun and touch god.

i think i should once again stop looking at this thread until some new video clip or ad confirms she's going for a "lolita" thing or whatever instead of the discursive internet deciding on a particular vibe based on a pair of bloomers xp

as wealthy megastars they are immune from whatever is being inflicted on girls and young women

ffs Taylor Swift was sexually assaulted at a meet and greet

*removes bookmark from thread*

yeah, my preceding words were rhetoric about undoing progressivism is being spewed by our technofeudal oppressors. legislation that disenfranchises women is being pressed forward - I was talking about this disenfranchisement, this reduction of social capital

Yeah there are quite a number of girls and women in the world who would be shocked to learn their wealth and privilege insulates them from the world’s worse truths. But yeah, fuck ever defending the teenage camgirl vibe off this. Fuck ever looking at an artist who’s previously been all about her personal agency, and difficulty and ugly emotions performing this shit kicking her legs on a frilly bed like a child in fucking bloomers and ever thinking “yeah that’s fine”. And fuck choice feminism, of course.

https://streamable.com/h9s2u1

ok so i’m the problem here and not the men levying shitty class analysis to criticize women they don’t take seriously. got it

I’m probably more likely to agree with someone going “yeah that is kind of off” regardless of the shittiness of their other arguments rather than someone jumping in to say “oh I’d wear that” and “this seems fine to me”, so?

I’m probably more likely to agree with someone going “yeah that is kind of off” regardless of the shittiness of their other arguments rather than someone jumping in to say “oh I’d wear that” and “this seems fine to me”, so?

― hat stays on (gyac), Tuesday, April 21, 2026 8:59 AM (seven minutes ago)

for me the thing is that it _is_ so hard to talk about, yeah there are systemic issues at play whether or not anyone in this thread personally would wear that, there's, like, _nuance_ and _context_ and it's very very very difficult to talk about that with people who are, like... i mean every single woman is a victim of patriarchy, at this point, in some pretty severe ways. and there are plenty of women who do work to perpetuate patriarchy. these things are both true. and it also pretty quickly becomes personal and complicated.

yeah, fuck choice feminism, and i have a complicated relationship to it because i didn't get to be a girl, a lot of us didn't get to be girls. to me this also definitely intersects with the masculinity thread, with "manhood" being defined by patriarchy in ways that are honestly often irresponsible and childish.

i get why people are noping out of this thread, and yeah, engaging with this thread is fucking me up emotionally, and it's important to me. because it's something i have to navigate on an everyday level. i'm an adult and i'm attracted to other adults and i encounter a lot of people who act in childish and sometimes not even _human_ ways, and i _don't_ have the luxury of telling them to "act their age" because what the fuck does that even _look_ like these days?

mainly i guess i'd say i'm... choosing to reserve my judgement on this. it's absolutely "problematic" behavior and to me, "problematic" doesn't mean "bad" necessarily, just worthy of further... god, i can't believe i'm defending Discourse. yeah. we're doing Discourse here and i'm doing it because i _know_ y'all and i _care_ about y'all as individuals.

This conversation made me curious how Rodrigo herself has been talking about her style lately.

From British Vogue:

As she enters this new fashion era, Rodrigo reveals “my Pinterest is all babydoll dresses and ’70s necklines. I want it all to feel fun and laid-back.” As a magpie for unique vintage pieces, her stylists, LA-based sisters Chloe and Chenelle Delgadillo, write to tell me that they are “always on the hunt for special finds [for Olivia]. When we travel, we make a point to visit local vintage dealers.” Rodrigo is a personal fan of Lovers Lane and Vault Vintage when in Notting Hill, and Chloe and Chenelle add that, “Lately, we’ve been drawn to archive Miu Miu and Marc Jacobs.” They look to modernise the vintage references and create a style that is “effortless, feminine, with a slightly undone feel”.

Elsewhere, the magazine notes a specific inspiration:

Lyrics and locations aside, the Anglophile has been doubling down on Jane Birkin style recently – she’s rarely seen out of her Repetto flats, which were beloved by Jane.

And in the drop dead video, the nods to the London-born poster girl for French-girl style are clear: eagle-eyed fans will have noticed she’s wearing a minidress identical to one worn by Birkin in the 1975 French film Catherine & Cie.

Hm jane birkin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_de_Melody_Nelson

you guys should try getting into pizzagate it's actually a much richer text than olivia rodrigo

Lol

I don’t even know if these associations are super conscious. I just think they’re there.

kinda hilarious how public she's been about charting a course for her own aesthetic taste only to keep releasing lead singles that sound like taylor swift singles... the woman really loves taylor swift. i like this song well enough, i don't think it gives you much to chew on, it sounds a lot like taylor swift, tho it's actually better than most latter day taylor swift

sounds more like Chappell Roan to me

…which makes sense with Dan Nigro producing and co-writing both, plus Amy Allen co-writing (who co-wrote “Espresso” and a ton of other similar recent pop tunes).

I have been posting on ILM for 26 years, and I have never come closer to walking away from it forever than I am right now. Perhaps I have been lucky all this time and just not looked at the worst threads. I think I’ll just pretend this one doesn’t exist.

Wisdom.

And it's only the first single!

tim is otm that this thread is terrible

j0rd is otm that this song is just a taylor swift song but rodrigo is better when she's not doing that. but i'd also like her to take some risks and not just do swift/alt rock pastiches but eh

I'm very confused by all this. I thought this was a pop culture discussion forum? Jaymc brought receipts - she's explicitly going for a Birkin thing - a woman who played a sexualised 14 year-old on an album by her far-senior lover btw - but rather than engage in good faith and discuss pop aesthetics circa 2026, you'd rather dismiss your interlocutors as 'very stupid men' (cheers!), cherrypick whole arguments for single sentences you can call out as moronic outside of their intended context (cheers again!), emotionally blackmail the site with your potential departures and call this a terrible thread? Come on, we're all adults. I'm not accusing any of you of being 'the problem' or bad people - I have great respect for you all in fact - but there's something about this album launch in particular that feels gratuitously infantile and upsetting to me, and more relevantly, upsetting for numerous women across the pop culture internet (I've checked) - so there's something to be dealt with.

Okay I’ll say something, mostly because I accept that it is probably a bit rude or churlish to complain but not explain.

I worry that we (or “we”) are too quick to use popular culture as the prism through which we seek to engage with one another about the big sociocultural (and also political or economic) debates of the day, without necessarily understanding exactly what it is we are doing (or not doing) by engaging with the world in that manner, or how that prism might encourage a certain intellectual and personal complacency that is ultimately counterproductive.

There is, needless to say, a certain irony in debating whether the powers that be are shoving certain notions of sexualised hyper-youthful femininity down our throats without pausing to recognise that, if there are such powers who are very deliberately and cynically offering this product up to us, this debate is exactly the debate they want us to spend all our time having. Put simply, the form of this debate is really no different from “is Britney too fat to perform on stage, yes or no”, only with a patina of self-congratulatory pseudo-emancipatory politics slathered over it so that we can distract ourselves from the depressing reality that at the end of the day we have allowed ourselves to be tricked (by the powers that be?? Yeah, in part. But equally by ourselves and each other) into pouring our energy into a debate about a young female pop star’s visual self-presentation, once again allowing that framework to be the stage on which questions of gender, sexuality, maturity, desire, exploitation and commodification are posed and debated.

Whatever stance one might take on this question, making this question the central question is playing into the hands of whatever structural inequality you purport to decry. We both can and should refuse to allow ourselves to fall into this discursive snakepit.

None of which means that these discussions should be treated as being off limits. But can we all at least try for a little self-awareness next time?

TLDR: Depeche Mode’s “New Dress”

me just now: “wow this thread is really active let’s see what the excitement is all about”

I like the song.

Jaymc brought receipts

Fwiw, I wasn't actually trying to bolster a particular argument. I just wanted to add some context to the conversation.

are we ready to move on to the controversy of her offical fan account posting advice on how to game streams and manipulate figures to ensure this is a #1 in the charts?

I was basically raised by MTV, so as long the artist isn't embracing right-wing imagery, so-called "controversial" videos just feel like the job, you know? Not to trivialize any of your critiques, but I gotta point to the women like Ivy and Kate for their well-worded ripostes.

Tim F bringing up Britney reminds me of how The Discourse (TM) left her squeezed between the right wing and their PMRC-style "how DARE she!" bullshit, and a left-wing influenced by 2nd/3rd Wave Feminism critiques (I agreed at the time, not proud of it now) thAt her popularity meant a zero-sum game where the Real Artists like those populating Lilith Fair (who were awesome, Indigos with Sarah and Deborah Cox singing "Closer to Fine"!) were being sidelined for her and the others in her class because she dared to dress/act like/whatever. I worry that so many of our woman popstar arguments are just a replication of that, even though we should know better after we've had multiple waves of feminism since then.

that's pretty ho-hum these days unfortunately. i don't know why artists bother pulling out all the stops for it tho. chart peaks arguably mean less than ever nowadays. the song will either hang on or it won't, the first-week performance won't mean anything

i think the song is pretty good and will stick around even if it's not the megasmash that every label wants their first-line artists to be releasing. neither was sabrina's "manchild", frankly, but it still did great at the end of the day

(xp)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnlOfG213Dg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ2CeJ_DvUA

"begged" is great

I hope this isn't single 2 as it sounds like an album track and not a single. It's pretty tho.