Review: With 'Vampire,' Olivia Rodrigo goes beyond the reach of mere mortals

POP/ROCK

Olivia Rodrigo, "Vampire"

The first single from Rodrigo's second album opens with a fake-out: "Vampire" at first appears to be a muted, heartbroken piano ballad in the vein of her 2021 smash "Drivers License," but after its first chorus the song revs up and kicks into a satisfyingly melodramatic, rock-operatic gear. The subject matter — a sharp-tongued post-breakup assessment of a manipulative ex — stays squarely within Rodrigo's comfort zone, but there are hints of grandiosity and a new sense of structural ambition that bode well for "Guts," due Sept. 8. The verses' chatty, run-on delivery is an instant reminder of the songwriting voice that turned Rodrigo into her generation's everygirl, and as usual the admitted fallibility makes her all the more relatable. But the song's true moment of brilliance comes from that melodic ascendance in the chorus — "The way you sold me for parts as you sunk your teeth into me, ohhhh," she belts — when Rodrigo reaches for and momentarily attains something beyond the reach of mere mortals.

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

Fall Out Boy, "We Didn't Start the Fire"

Billy Joel has a complicated relationship with his infamous 1989 megahit "We Didn't Start the Fire" — he has, in the years since writing it, called it "more annoying than musical" — but even he should have a new appreciation for its composition after listening to the cover by Fall Out Boy. The band attempts a "system update" of the track, keeping the instrumentation nearly identical but changing the lyrics to chronicle "newsworthy items from 1989-2023." The most obvious problem is the structure: For all its absurd juxtapositions, Joel's song is chronological and gives a real sense of cultural time passing; Fall Out Boy give us such temporal non sequiturs as "Fyre Fest, 'Black Parade'/Michael Phelps, Y2K." Such poetic license might be more forgivable for the sake of clever cadence, but this is a song that tries to rhyme "Brexit" with "Taylor Swift." The tone, too, is a head-scratcher: Fall Out Boy's version is neither funny nor serious enough to make a cogent point. Joel was right the first time: I can't take it anymore. Fall Out Boy performs July 13 at the Somerset (Wis.) Amphitheater.

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

COUNTRY

Colter Wall, "For a Long While"

Wall may be country's truest disciple of Willie Nelson. His terse but thoughtful songs sound close-knit, casual and real time, and the lead guitar — sometimes doubled by a harmonica, à la Nelson — is modest and acoustic, not electric. Wall has time, memory and restlessness on his mind. "When things get slow you got to go/hear that highway whine," he sings in this existential meditation in down-home garb.

JON PARELES, New York Times

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