Olivia Rodrigo – “Dangerous Concept Proper?”

You possibly can play spot-the-influence all day. It’s enjoyable! Why not! Elastica! Fountains Of Wayne! Moist Leg! And sure, it’s unusual and miraculous {that a} child pop star with a Disney pedigree is making a revved-up power-pop banger with a noisy-freakout guitar solo and a “Boy Named Sue” lyrical quote. Nevertheless it’s greater than that. It’s greater. “Dangerous Concept Proper?” is a straight-up monster earworm, an on the spot pop traditional that calls for a full-throated singalong on the second hear. It’s an amazing tune, one that may grasp and bang with any of its doable antecedents.

Olivia Rodrigo has already overachieved on each conceivable degree. She’s mastered the types of heart-wrecked power-ballad and sugar-rush pop-punk ripper, and he or she’s achieved mainstream household-name pop stardom in an age when that’s functionally unimaginable. “Vampire,’ the primary single from her sophomore album, was a screaming, raging gutstomp buildup that also debuted at #1. “Dangerous Concept Proper?” nearly definitely gained’t make the identical pop influence, and it doesn’t have to. The tune does one thing extra beneficial. It captures the twitchy, nervous headrush power of doing one thing that you shouldn’t do, one thing all your folks are warning you to not do, one thing you don’t need to withstand anyway. It’s obtained appeal and hooks and frantic pleasure working for it. It’s humorous, and it’s addictive.

“Dangerous Concept Proper?” has the straightforward setup of an improv skit and the delirious urgency of a midnight confession. It’s an Olivia Rodrigo tune that doesn’t depict her because the wronged occasion in a breakup, which appears like some sort of breakthrough. It really works as a result of it’s a tightly constructed, energetically carried out alt-pop rager but in addition as a result of Rodrigo commits to the lyrical conceit with wild-eyed theater-kid gusto. This appears like a novel approach to construct an enormous pop profession: Cease worrying about chart placement and simply hold making actually, actually nice songs. That’s a contemporary idea. One would possibly even name it a good suggestion. —Tom