Ever since Olivia Rodrigo steered onto the scene in 2021 along with her chart-topping ballad “Driver’s License,” she’s been decisively topped the Subsequent Massive Factor in pop. Nonetheless, whilst she was showered with Grammys and co-signed by everybody from Alanis Morissette to Jack White, there’s been a way of unsettledness amongst a few of her millennial and Gen X followers, notably males, who really feel bizarre for relating so deeply to the innermost emotions of a now-20-year-old.
That sensation—so hilariously captured in a viral SNL skit the place a bunch of older guys sing-scream alongside to “Driver’s License”—doesn’t seem to have diminished with the discharge of Rodrigo’s sophomore album, Guts. So why can’t the dudes of the world simply cease worrying and study to put on their Olivia love on their sleeve?
Maria Sherman, a music author on the Related Press, has observed a current evolution within the demographics of Rodrigo’s fanbase. “We’re seeing that dialog evolve the place it’s accepted that individuals of all ages, notably older girls, are referring to and feeling for Olivia Rodrigo, and now there’s a reference to males, too,” she tells The Each day Beast. “To not say that they weren’t listening to it, however I’ve definitely seen this dialog come up fairly a bit.”
For some older male followers, the draw to Rodrigo’s music would possibly truly stem from the generational divide itself. Jeff, a 35-year-old from Brooklyn, says he’s a fan of Rodrigo due to “the Gen Z of all of it. I believe I’m simply type of fascinated by that era. In the previous few years, I’ve began realizing that as a smack-dab-in-the-middle millennial, I’m now not a part of the younger, enjoyable, progressive era, no less than comparatively. I actually just like the openness and maturity and vulnerability in her music that I believe is indicative of plenty of Gen Z.”
That vulnerability is precisely what lots of the male Rodrigo followers I spoke to pointed to once they tried to elucidate why they resonated with songs like “Driver’s License.” In any case, at 20 years previous, Rodrigo is a part of a era that appears extra in a position to healthily course of their feelings as a substitute of repressing them. The factor that each man who loves singing alongside to songs like “Deja Vu” talked about is precisely what makes Rodrigo’s music well-liked: that common teenage feeling.
Jesse, 34, discovered about Rodrigo’s music as a result of he teaches at a highschool in Oakland, California. He jokes that as a married man in his thirties, a Rodrigo live performance won’t be the area for him, however he will get on the precise kernel that has made her so successful.
“She captures plenty of the expertise of being an insecure teen with out compromising a extra grownup voice to take action,” he says. “Even if you happen to don’t like her music, I don’t know that there are numerous artists which might be in a position to thread that needle in the identical means.”
Sherman provides that Rodrigo’s sound is a gateway for male followers to expertise the confessional nature of her music in a means which may make her extra accessible than different feminine pop stars.
“There’s a type of assumed, I assume, male friendliness of this music, which doesn’t straight mirror the listenership, however has all the time been type of understood culturally,” she explains. “I believe that enables males who love this music to additionally love Olivia Rodrigo’s interpretations and type of explorations in it, maybe with out feeling insecure of liking a younger girl’s music. I’m hoping that’s extra of a cultural shift, however there may be definitely one thing to the truth that this music is coded or offered traditionally for males, and hopefully we’re evolving in a sure means the place folks at the moment are accepting of anyone performing it, which they need to be.”
However Rodrigo’s enchantment goes past the emotion and vulnerability of her music. For 32-year-old fan Ariel, Rodrigo, who’s Filipino American, additionally represents an essential variety shift in pop music.
“Within the early days of YouTube, the platform was raised up by younger cowl artists and songwriters like AJ Rafael and Ardour, but that success by no means noticed the mainstream,” he says. “Filipinos love R&B, rock music, and ballads, and artists like Bruno Mars and H.E.R. are consultant of the Filipino American normal of expertise and love of hip-hop and R&B. Olivia Rodrigo is the consultant of our tradition’s different nice musical love. She’s a hit story that represents what everybody is aware of about Filipinos: rattling, we are able to sing.”
Ariel’s point out of style is one thing that comes up usually within the discourse round Rodrigo’s music. Jeff ended up entering into Bitter as a result of it sounds just like the type of music he’s all the time preferred; he recollects being an on the spot fan of the punky, guitar-driven “Good 4 U” as a result of it so intently recalled the pop-punk he grew up on. Likewise, Rodrigo’s potential to seamlessly meld genres like pop, punk, and rock is one thing that definitely attracts a extra various spectrum of listeners to her music, together with males.
“I believe she’s cherry-picking sure issues that lend themselves to a male, rock-listening viewers. I hear Pavement and The Treatment in her information as a lot as I hear Gap and Avril Lavigne,” Sherman says. “I’ve talked to some males about it lately, type of colloquially, and the evaluation appears to be that they actually get pleasure from that she’s a rock star. She’s not a pop star, and that’s one thing that they join with. It feels a bit gender essentialist, however there’s something to that concept of male followers who had been extra rock-oriented sporting their Olivia Rodrigo fandom brazenly, versus hiding from it merely due to who she is.”
Certainly, nearly all of guys I spoke with had been initially drawn to Rodrigo’s sound as a result of it was paying homage to what they grew up listening to—bands like My Chemical Romance, Paramore, and Dashboard Confessional. However Chandler, 30, mentions a chunk of the puzzle which will have extra male followers clamoring to Rodrigo’s music.
“I additionally imagine that mainstream music, each in songs by feminine artists and by male artists, has turn into a bit extra emotional and moody,” he says. “Like, the explosion of sad-boy rap, the expansion of the emo revival, [with] MGK, Meet Me on the Altar, Yungblood, and Halsey going pop-punk—these are all a part of the story to me.”
“Yeah, I’m a 33-year-old straight bald man now, however I can assure me and my dude-bro friends felt insecurity, craving, and angst simply as arduous because the 19-year-old lady unpacking her freshman dorm this week.”
So if we’re lastly getting extra music that’s permitting males to be of their emotions on a extra mainstream airplane, why not get right into a pop girlie that toes the road of the entire above? Andy, 33, a Los Angeles-based Rodrigo fan, definitely feels that her music goes past outworn gender boundaries: “Gonna be actual, I type of take umbrage with that evaluation,” he says. “Nora Ephron wasn’t making films for ladies, she was making films about girls for everybody. Present me a man who didn’t get emotional throughout You’ve Obtained Mail and I’ll present you somebody who has been mendacity to himself.”
Presumably, Guts will convert much more males into followers—and make those who’re already on board much more passionate. Most of the guys I spoke to talked about being enormous followers of lead single “Vampire,” and appeared enthusiastic about her leaning extra into punk territory on album two. As Jeff excitedly places it, “If Bitter was crying right into a pint of Haagen-Dazs, I believe Guts will likely be taking a baseball bat to the windshield.”
Guts definitely shakes off the sophomore droop by proving that Rodrigo’s common enchantment continues to be firmly intact as she continues to develop as an individual and a pop star—and that her followers, whether or not they’re 18 or 81, man or girl or nonbinary, are alongside for the journey.
“She positively writes from a younger girl’s perspective,” Andy says of her enchantment, “however I’d say a lot of what her songwriting is about is fairly common to the expertise of being an adolescent, or having the fortune of being younger and in love, or the misfortune of being younger and infatuated. She’s strolling the identical floor because the indie-rock and power-pop darlings males in my era had been surreptitiously spilling our emotions to within the mid-aughts. Yeah, I’m a 33-year-old straight bald man now, however I can assure me and my dude-bro friends felt insecurity, craving, and angst simply as arduous because the 19-year-old lady unpacking her freshman dorm this week. Whether or not or not my friends need to cop to that’s their very own drawback.”