All-American Bitch

"All-American Bitch" (stylized in all lowercase) is a song by American singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo. It is the opening track on her second studio album, Guts (2023), which was released on September 8, 2023, by Geffen Records. Rodrigo wrote it with her producer Dan Nigro. A folk song that transforms into a pop-punk song midway, "All-American Bitch" was inspired by an essay written by Joan Didion that used the titular words. Its lyrics are about the societal expectations placed on women.

Background
After the commercial success of her debut studio album, Sour (2021), Olivia Rodrigo continued collaborating with Dan Nigro, who had produced all of the tracks on it. The follow-up album, Guts (2023), was conceived when she was aged 19, a year that she described as "lots of confusion, mistakes, awkwardness & good old fashioned teen angst". The album and its title were announced on June 26, 2023, and its lead single, "Vampire", was released four days later. The song reached number one in various countries, including the United States, where it became her third number one single on the Billboard Hot 100. "Bad Idea Right?" was chosen as the follow-up single.

Rodrigo wrote "All-American Bitch" with Nigro. She told Zane Lowe in an interview for Apple Music: "I really love the song [..] It's one of my favorite songs I've ever written. I really love the lyrics of it and I think it expresses something that I've been trying to express since I was 15 years old, this repressed pressed anger and feeling of confusion or trying to be put into a box as a girl." The song began on a piano but was eventually turned into an "intense rock song". Rodrigo stated that the title was derived from an essay by Joan Didion (the titular essay in Slouching Towards Bethlehem): "[...] she wrote about hippies in San Francisco and running away from home. One of the runaways was talking about his mom back home and said that she was an 'all-American bitch.' I was like, 'Wow, that's so cool.' It's such a provocative set of words. I sat down the next day at the piano and wrote 'All-American Bitch.'... You never know the trajectory a song is going to take." On August 1, 2023, Rodrigo revealed Guts's tracklist, which features "All-American Bitch" as the first track. The song was released as a track of Guts on September 8, 2023. via Geffen Records. A rehearsal video accompanied its release, in which Rodrigo sports a shirt with a picture of Fiona Apple.

Composition
"All-American Bitch" is two minutes and 45 seconds long. Nigro engineered the song with Sam Stewart, Sterling Laws, Dave Schiffman, and Jasmine Chen and provided production and vocal production. He plays acoustic guitar, electric guitar, percussion, bass, synthesizer, and drum programming; Stewart plays acoustic guitar and electric guitar; Laws plays drums; and Ryan Linvill plays bass. Spike Stent mixed the song, and Randy Merrill mastered it.

"All-American Bitch" begins as a "wind-swept folk hymn before abruptly turning into a pop-punk thrasher" according to Billboard's Jason Lipshutz. The song's lyrics pay homage to how young women are expected never to display unhappiness, and incorporates Rodrigo's screams in its production. Rodrigo starts by singing over soft guitar strums, detailing a portrayal of perfection: "I am light as a feather and as stiff as a board / I pay attention to things that most people ignore." During the chorus which features drums and guitars, her delivery gets more aggressive: "I forgive and I forget / I know my age and I act like it." Rodrigo assumes a gentle tone in the verses and a furious one in the choruses. Rodrigo includes lyrics about how women are expected to hold back their anger or be called too emotional. Some of her vocals in the song received comparisons to Avril Lavigne and Alanis Morissette. The bridge contains Rodrigo screaming, while the outro lines parody the several prize acceptance speeches she has already delivered: "All the time, I'm grateful all the time / I'm sexy and I'm kind / I'm pretty when I cry."

Reception
In a ranking of all songs on Guts, Lipshutz named "All-American Bitch" the second best track and stated: "the track is a tour de force album opener that once again demonstrates Rodrigo's singular gift for genre refraction". He compared the song to the Sour track "Brutal" and thought both of them proved her versatility. Elle's Erica Gonzales believed "All-American Bitch" was a "killer opener" and "as punchy as the title suggests, though [listeners] wouldn't be able to tell from the first few notes". She opined the drums in the chorus hit "like a tantrum" and "the melody swings from sweet to sour (pardon the pun), angelic to chaotic". While comparing Guts to a "soundtrack to the best early 2000s teen comedy that never existed", The A.V. Club's Mary Kate Carr felt it was a song that would have fit the 1999 10 Things I Hate About You soundtrack. Following the release of "All-American Bitch", online TikTok videos compared its chorus to Miley Cyrus's 2008 single "Start All Over".

Commercial performance
"All-American Bitch" debuted at number 13 on the US Billboard Hot 100 issued for September 23, 2023. In Canada, the song entered at number 15 on the Canadian Hot 100 issued for the same date and was certified Gold by Music Canada. It debuted at number 78 on the UK Singles Chart. "All-American Bitch" received a Silver certification in the United Kingdom from the British Phonographic Industry, and the Official Charts Company declared it her 17th-biggest song in the country in February 2024.

In Australia, "All-American Bitch" entered at number 10 and became Rodrigo's eighth top 10 song. The song debuted at number seven in New Zealand and became her 10th top 10 song. It charted at number nine on the Billboard Global 200. Elsewhere, "All-American Bitch" reached national record charts at number 7 on the Sweden Heatseeker chart, number 8 in Ireland, number 22 in Singapore, number 29 in Greece, number 34 in Portugal, number 96 in Poland, and number 171 in France.

Usage in media
"All-American Bitch" appeared in the trailer for Apple TV+ series The Buccaneers, which premiered on November 8, 2023.

Credits and personnel
Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Guts.
 * Olivia Rodrigo – vocals, background vocals, songwriter
 * Dan Nigro – producer, songwriter, engineer, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, percussion, vocal producer, bass, synthesizer, drum programming, background vocals
 * Sam Stewart – engineer, acoustic guitar, electric guitar
 * Sterling Laws – drums, engineer
 * Dave Schiffman – engineer
 * Jasmine Chen – engineer
 * Ryan Linvill – bass
 * Randy Merrill – mastering
 * Spike Stent – mixing