FILE - Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England on June 29, 2025. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP, File)

American pop star Olivia Rodrigo and I were born 62 days apart.

She was born on Feb. 20, 2003, and I was born on April 24, 2003. I usually start planning for my birthday when she posts about hers on social media.

I grew up with Rodrigo as she rose to stardom quite early.

I followed her on Instagram when she had about 2,000 followers in 2015 after she starred in “An American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success.” I watched her play Paige Olvera in the television show “Bizaardvark.” And don’t get me started on “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.”

Being a Rodrigo fan, I enjoyed her last two studio albums, but her most recent work, “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love,” is her most complex album to date, following the emotional journey of falling in and out of love with someone, including the highs of being known and the tears of defeat.

You can’t necessarily classify it as a break-up or love album — it’s more of an audiobook.

I’d argue that she somewhat follows Fretag’s pyramid of dramatic structure, taking her experience of falling in love with her recent ex-boyfriend Louis Partridge as the rising action, using the breakup as the climax and toying with her post-breakup emotions as the falling action.

In an interview with radio DJ Zane Lowe, Rodrigo said the feelings she was experiencing while making the album “were very up and down and high and low, and so I wanted to have songs that reflected that.”

Channeling experiences with Partridge, Rodrigo’s songs

“drop dead” and “stupid song” capture the honeymoon stage, “honeybee” and “maggots for brains” show the complexity of Rodrigo’s feelings for Partridge and “u + me = <3" and "my way" hone in on Partridge being Rodrigo's man (maybe forever). "Purple" is where the line of love and loss begins to blur, especially when she sings the chorus, "and I melt with you / your red and my blue / now I see the world in / purple." Red signifying love and blue signifying loss, Rodrigo is struggling with those emotions through purple-colored lenses after their breakup. Ending "purple" with "melt with you till it all turns black / melt with you till i just feel sad" is the knife in the coffin and what leads into the breakup portion of the album. There's an edge to "the cure" and "expectations," but there's an outlet of emotions to "begged," "what's wrong with me," and "less" that make listeners question if Rodrigo and Partridge were truly in love, mocking post-breakup conversations with parents or friends. "Cigarette smoke" offers listeners a hazy ending to a whirlwind romance with the final lines, "tell me something honest / so the memories turn dark," teasing the start of Rodrigo's healing journey. Lowe said to Rodrigo that this album "changed shape as you were making it. It's a chronological experience." Some people were disappointed with the sound of her new album, as they were looking for her usual punk-rock undertones but instead found softer and deeper songs. "I hate to see the sharp edges get blunted so early," Teen Vogue senior editor P. Claire Dodson wrote in her album review. "I hate to think that's what happens when we grow up." While Dodson's worst fear is, unfortunately, most likely true, I disagree that Rodrigo's anger is fizzling out, but she wanted to produce something a bit different instead. "I kind of knew that I didn't want to go like power chord, rock n' roll type of thing, which I think a lot of people maybe expected," Rodrigo told Lowe. "I wanted to be softer, subtler, and I was like pulling a lot of references from new wave bands." Obviously, this album is different from "SOUR" and "GUTS," and I think that's perfectly okay. Artists may be known for a specific skill, but when does that skill become overdone by their creator? When do fans finally turn away from the artist they once praised for recycling their own material, unable to produce something new? Rodrigo is only 23 years old; she's (hopefully) at the beginning of her music career. While I'm all for constructive criticism, we should encourage Rodrigo and other artists to take a creative leap and make something different. Artists are meant to tap the glass, which is what Rodrigo did with her newest album.