Olivia Rodrigo is relentlessly upset in messy new music video for ‘Brutal’
Olivia Rodrigo may not know how to parallel park, but she certainly knows how to deliver a cathartic music video.
On Monday, the teen pop sensation released her most angsty visual accompaniment yet for “Brutal,” the head-banging opening track of her debut album, “Sour.”
The appropriately messy video sees the emerging singer-songwriter in a near-constant state of emotional distress — writhing on the floor of a ballet studio, anchoring an unsettlingly perky morning news program, rolling her eyes in a drab high school classroom, hosting an unhinged livestream, getting physically dragged through an abandoned shopping mall, etc.
‘Sour’ is 18-year-old Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album, following the chart-topping success of her first-ever single, ‘Drivers License.’
“I’m so sick of 17 / Where’s my f— teenage dream?” she sings on the guitar-heavy track. “If someone tells me one more time / ‘Enjoy your youth,’ I’m gonna cry / And I don’t stick up for myself. I’m anxious and nothing can help / And I wish I’d done this before / And I wish people liked me more.”
Directed by repeat Rodrigo collaborator Petra Collins, the montage also includes a slew of visual effects resembling social media “filters,” which alter the appearance of a person’s face. In some shots, cartoon tears spill from the musician’s eyes; in others, hot-pink flames rise from her eyebrows.
President Joe Biden invited ‘Drivers License’ hitmaker Olivia Rodrigo to the White House to help encourage her fellow youths to get vaccinated against COVID.
“All I did was try my best / This the kind of thanks I get? / I’m relentlessly upset,” she laments while sitting in standstill traffic — a painfully relatable L.A. image.
“They say these are the golden years / But I wish I could disappear / Ego crush is so severe / God, it’s brutal out here.”
“Brutal” is the fourth song from “Sour” to get the music video treatment following “Drivers License,” “Deja Vu” and “Good 4 U,” the latest single off her record-shattering studio collection to shoot to the top of the charts.
You can scream along to the full video for “Brutal” here.
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