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.
“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.
“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.
