When Disney Secretly Repackaged Riot Grrrl

Olivia Rodrigo's latest single, "Good 4 U," comes from a long lineage of teen girl pop rock--that 2007 Radio Disney sound, as fellow young rocker Willow Smith put it. The 18-year-old Rodrigo's trio of singles have garnered praise for paying homage to her female Disney Channel predecessors, who similarly explored the emotional spectrum of girlhood through their music, chronicling its cheesy jubilance, frustration, pettiness, adventurousness, and confusion. For young girls in the 2000s, Disney-produced pop rock provided an outlet for those budding teenage feelings of rage against various "machines," defined as anything from annoying boys to the restrictions of youth--"they just don't understand me" is perhaps the catchphrase of ages 12 to 19. At almost 21 years old, barely two years removed from this demographic, I'm still desperately on the hunt for self-definition; it's an endless quest that, like all journeys, deserves a proper soundtrack. Radio Disney rock spoke to a generation of girls who grew up watching blogs, tabloids, and TV news conduct public crucifixions of women for daring to have fun, feel human emotions, or have a body--basically, for existing.