What if i don’t?

By Seoyeon (Claudia) Kim  ‘28

Olivia Rodrigo is an artist who distills teenage emotions into their most condensed, unvarnished form. Her music is marked by emotional honesty and blunt lyricism. Rather than illustrating an embellished teenage dream, Olivia exposes the underlying truth.

Across her discography, the idea of a ‘teenage dream’ evolves alongside her own coming of age. The growth is most evident in brutal and teenage dream — two songs that mirror one another revealing her gradual growth from a frustrated teenager searching for answers to a young artist reflecting on her life growing up amid fame.

In brutal, she demands, “Where’s my fucking teenage dream?” The question is full of anger and desperation. Brutal’s teenage dream represents an imagined ideal of teenage life: carefree youth centered on happiness and belonging. Yet this fantasy is tarnished, collapsed under the weight of her reality: broken first love, isolation and self-doubt. Her frustration does not stem from heartbreaks; it derives from the promise of an idealized teenage-hood. brutal is a longing for the ideal and the quiet restraint felt in the lack of what it delivers. In brutal, Olivia is in search of a definite answer, an explanation for all her teenage struggles.

On teenage dream, the question has changed into a reflection. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t always be your teenage dream.” Sung with resignation, the song feels like a letter written to her younger self. In retrospect, she reflects on her past; despite her aspirations she wasn’t able to be the carefree, happy girl she dreamt of being. Fame has consumed her youth, bereaving her beloved dream.

While SOUR captures the chaos and urgency of a teenager, GUTS reflects on it with maturity. The arc from brutal to teenage dream forms a full circle: what once demanded for answers now poignantly reflect on its unattainability. Olivia comes to understand that some dreams are not meant to be fulfilled, only dreamt. The teenage dream was never something of her own, only something of the past, something meant to let go.