Today: Mar 28, 2024

Music Review: Olivia Rodrigo is “brutal” in new music video

Sarah SheltonFeatures Editor

Olivia Rodrigo has quickly risen from being a Disney channel star to a very well-known pop artist. 

Rodrigo recently dropped her music video for her first track on her well known album,“SOUR”, and it’s a lot. 

“Brutal” is the title of the first track on her album, and it’s one that’s the most “Rock-sounding” on the album, and now there’s a video to go along with it. 

The video is directed by Petra Collins, who has directed other successful music videos such as, “Fetish” by Selena Gomez, “Good 4 u” by Olivia Rodrigo and “Bartier Cardi” by Cardi B.  

Rodrigo wrote on Instagram, “So so so grateful for Petra Collins, who constantly inspires me and who directed this video so incredibly. Hope you guys love the vid and all my teen angst lol.” 

The video starts with a choose your character screen, like a late 90s early 2000s video game. 

The blue ballerina is picked first, which quickly transitions to Olivia wearing a pink ballet dress with full body fishnets. 

Rodrigo also portrays a news anchor, a model, a student, a social media influencer, and others in the music video. 

Though-out the video, Rodrigo uses crazy filters on her face that were edited on.  

At first I didn’t fully understand the video, but I saw a comment under the video by a fan, called Debo Gaming, explaining the way they interpreted it and it made me appreciate the video a lot more. 

“For me, I think that the choose your character represents being forced to fit society’s standards and the ballet is something she felt like she needed to do, the live [the social media influencer being on a live video] explaining how she feels, the overuse of filters is how she feels she needs to look like,” the fan wrote. “When she finally does the things she wants to do and steps into her own shoes is when she is in the car but the filters can come back slightly and the ballerinas so she feels not entirely herself but is still happy, and the honking is people getting annoyed because she is not living up to their expectations.”  

As much as I appreciate that message of the video, it has not been confirmed by anyone if that was the true explanation of the video. 

I personally think the video could have been more about her teenage life and the drama that comes with it, and not just some random characters because of the lyrics, but I think the video really fits the song because the majority of the characters make sense.  

I believe the news anchor explained how she gets torn apart by the media, when she’s being dragged by two girls throughout what looks like a mall, that could explain fake friends or feeling like her life’s being dragged on and the student because when she wrote this song she was a senior in high school.  

I appreciated all the different characters she dressed up as. That must have taken a long time to come up with and film; because of the clothing and makeup changes.  

I love Petra Collins as a director. She clearly had a vision of what she wanted, I just wish there were less filters.  

I definitely think Collins focused on the first lyric of the song, “I want it to be, like, messy,” while directing the video. 

Overall, I think the song is amazing and I really appreciate the type of music Olivia Rodrigo is making, especially coming from a Disney Channel actress because most of these stars aren’t allowed to put out music like this.  

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