Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #263

"favorite crime" by Olivia Rodrigo aka SOUR the fall quarterly album post - 10/07/21

"favorite crime" by Olivia Rodrigo

The teenage Gen Zer Olivia Rodrigo might have written the best breakup album of 2021 and the most popular (SOUR broke the global Spotify record for the biggest opening week for an album by a female artist).

If perhaps also one of the more toxic.

Or at least that’s what I thought earlier this year when I heard a few songs.

But today after shuffling to this song, I finally listened to the full album straight through, on the commute to the day job, and in the edit now this afternoon I realize this post has grown and turned into the fall quarterly album post.

So buckle up!

This morning I remembered what a friend said about it:

“Songs about toxic times in our lives don’t have to be toxic themselves.”

And this is certainly true of the song “favorite crime”.

It’s the penultimate song on the album, and after listening to them all in order, after it was shuffled-to, I feel like this one hits slightly differently.

As Kelefa Sanneh of The New Yorker wrote of ‘drivers license’: “Like many great breakup songs, this one is both a lament and an indictment.”

But while most of the previous songs on the album like “drivers license” have to do with simply indicting her former lover.

Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me
'Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street

In “favorite crime” she also indicts herself, implying that she is partly responsible for her heartbreak because she let herself be treated badly in the relationship.

Know that I loved you so bad
I let you treat me like that
I was your willing accomplice, honey

and…

The things I did
Just so I could call you mine

Genius.com says that this penultimate song is the moment in the album when “she starts the process of moving on.”

From a synchronicity/memoir POV, this Sunday is the day when two old LA friends of my ex(?)-wife and I are having a goodbye party thrown for them as they move away from LA.

If you’ve been following along with the Substack, you’ll know that my (ex?)-wife decided last month to stop communicating with me in any way here.

And yet it seems we are both likely invited to this party on Sunday.

I know I am at least.

And I know I plan to go.

Oh, look what we became

Well, I hope I was your favorite crime

Your favorite crime
Your favorite crime
'Cause, baby, you were mine

After the separation, I think now I may have prematurely jumped to acceptance in the 5 phases of the grief process, skipping anger and depression, but also having more than a dollop of denial and lately some bargaining, which didn’t go so well LOL.

Listening to Rodrigo’s album today, I see more the value of anger and depression.

Or in meme form:

But I also see in this penultimate song how I am also angry with myself and sad for my complicity in my own situation.

I crossed my heart as you crossed the line
And I defended you to all my friends

I remember last month when I was talking to the friend who officiated our marriage and the friend who was my best man in this post, how I really fell apart in that conversation and let a lot of that anger and sadness out.

But also to be held by them.

At one point I said something about how I had let her treat me however she wanted in the marriage, including things I wouldn’t accept now, but which now also included letting her cut me out of her life.

And my friend who officiated our marriage said something like: “I guess you have to live with the consequences of those choices.”

I was your willing accomplice, honey
And I watched as you fled the scene

Or as Richard Clark, a 38-year-old self-identifying geriatric millennial, has been quoted by Jenny Singer as saying: “Olivia has created one of the all-time great divorce albums.” The album is cathartic for people who are “dealing with probably the most intense, high-stakes breakup they've ever had,” he says. “They're not allowed to react in the way Olivia does, at least not blatantly. I think that—the pure lack of restraint—is where older millennials are finding it to be a breath of fresh air.”

Haha, I guess I have a pure lack of restraint ;)

Speaking of which, I can’t help but name drop that my ex’s two friends created the Disney TV show, Bizaardvark, which gave Olivia her start.

We had a blast at the wedding of one of the creators in 2019 in between manic episodes until we suddenly didn’t and had a fight and left without saying bye to the couple.

Or as Olivia sings:

“1 step forward, 3 steps back” by Olivia Rodrigo

It's one step forward and three steps back
And I'd leave you, but the roller coaster is all I've ever had

It’s also a little funny to me that the friends who are having the going away party thrown for them this weekend know the couples therapist that we started seeing at the end who seemed to more help her separate from me rather than have us work on repairing the relationship together and then went on to see her for individual therapy.

Or as Olivia sings:

“good 4 u” by Olivia Rodrigo

And good for you, I guess that you've been working on yourself
I guess that therapist I found for you, she really helped
Now you can be a better man for your brand-new girl

I am actually happy that she’s doing well and working on herself, though I do wonder if she’ll bring her ‘brand-new man’ to the party, LOL.

Though I’m also wondering now, another LOL here, if I’m starting to sound again like Mikey Day moaning about his ex Gina in this SNL skit about a group of blue-collar men empathizing with Olivia at a billiards bar:

I can’t quite tell yet if this post is a Chaotic Good or has devolved to Chaotic Evil.

My rising sign is Aquarius, but my sun sign is Aries ;)

The final song of the album, which as Sanneh of The New Yorker notes “is startlingly single-minded, and effectively so: eleven semisweet songs, almost all of them about love gone wrong”, is the only one that’s not ostensibly about the breakup.

“hope ur ok” by Olivia Rodrigo

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It’s about two acquaintances who are seemingly outcasts and/or part of the LGBTQ+ community who Rodrigo doesn’t keep in touch with as much anymore but hopes are OK.

Her parents hated who shе loved

Does she know how proud I am she was created
With the courage to unlearn all of their hatred?

We don't talk much, but I just gotta say
I miss you and I hope that you're okay

But perhaps beneath that story, which is a very important one, is the beginning also of the real final stage of grief, which is the process of letting go of what we can’t keep.

And benevolently wishing them well.

With “hope ur ok” it’s almost as if she projects a wishing well of okayness onto acquaintances and a movement.

When one day she will also direct the hope of okayness to the ex.

Which I feel now too for mine.

Mostly ;)

As she sings to conclude the song and the album:

But, God, I hope that you're happier today
'Cause I love you
And I hope that you're okay

Okay, that’s the two hundred and sixty-third Shuffle Synchronicities.

For more on how ‘geriatric millennials’ like myself and likely many of the readers of this Substack love Olivia Rodrigo and all that she symbolizes about the evolution of Gen Z from our times as teenagers, check out Jenny Singer’s Glamour piece.

And for more Kelefa Sanneh, check out his new book on music genres Major Labels out this month.