lolitslea - RollerCoaster Tycoon
For anyone who grew up obsessively building theme parks on an early-2000s computer, the title immediately conjures images of pixelated rides, winding pathways, questionable park-management decisions, and the inevitable disaster of putting a bathroom nowhere near the food court. For lolitslea, however, RollerCoaster Tycoon isn't simply a reference to a beloved computer game. It's a metaphor for life—and her sophomore album turns that metaphor into a vibrant, chaotic, and surprisingly heartfelt pop-punk playground.
The Asbury Park artist has been steadily carving out her own corner of the modern pop-punk landscape since releasing her debut LP, Nothing Lasts Forever!, in 2024. While that album introduced Lea as an artist capable of combining scene nostalgia with contemporary songwriting, RollerCoaster Tycoon feels like a much bigger statement of identity. The fluorescent blues and greens associated with her visual aesthetic carry over into the music, but underneath all the colour is an album concerned with burnout, nostalgia, relationships, uncertainty, and growing into adulthood.
The intro track "Main Menu," featuring Glitch Gum, immediately establishes the album's video-game-inspired framework. Rather than treating the concept as a gimmick, Lea uses these transitional moments to give the record its own internal architecture. "Loading Screen 1," "Loading Screen 2," and "Credits" make the album feel like an experience that has been deliberately constructed from beginning to end, while the songs themselves provide the emotional substance behind the colourful presentation.
However, there is plenty of substance. "Wish I'd Known" sets the emotional machinery in motion, while "BURNOUT!! BURNOUT!!" tackles one of the less glamorous realities of trying to build a career in music: working relentlessly just to keep the dream alive. Lea's description of walking into the writing session exhausted, with "heavy eyelids and a fast heart rate," is reflected in the song's restless energy. It's an appropriately frantic anthem for anyone caught between the desire to pursue something meaningful and the very real necessity of making ends meet.
That tension is balanced beautifully by the following track, "Summer 09," one of the album's most nostalgic moments. Inspired by Lea's own memories of the summer between middle school and high school, the song captures the freedom of riding bikes with friends, experiencing a first kiss, and wandering around the neighbourhood without much concern for what comes next. Its coming-of-age perspective gives the track a warmth that complements the record's louder, more mischievous moments. The influence of Mayday Parade's "Kids in Love" is apparent in the song's nostalgic pop-punk sensibility, but Lea filters that inspiration through her own memories.
The title track is where the album's central metaphor comes fully into focus. "RollerCoaster Tycoon" embraces the unpredictability of life rather than attempting to smooth out its contradictions. Lea's own description—"Life is a rollercoaster (cliché)"—is deliberately straightforward, but the song's concept gives that cliché a personality. Her invitation to "become a part of my chaos" essentially doubles as an invitation into the world of the album itself.
Elsewhere, Lea turns her attention toward romance and interpersonal relationships. "Chemistry (Not A Love Song)" deliberately plays with expectations, while "Tragedy," featuring Jack The Underdog, takes an explicit stance on anti-hookup culture. "Whenever You'll Be" and "He's A God (Complex)" further explore the album's relationship-oriented side without abandoning its larger pop-punk identity. However, the former does strip things back immensely.
One of the album's strengths is that it doesn't insist on staying in a single emotional register. "I hate sugar!!!" and "I Wish You Were Lame" add some of the bratty, playful attitude that makes Lea's neon pop-punk aesthetic work, while "Other Side Of My Window" offers another opportunity for introspection with the music being stripped back. The explosive number "Sleep Over," featuring The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus' K Enagonio, adds another collaborative voice before the album eventually reaches its outro track "Credits," again featuring Glitch Gum.
Those collaborations are particularly fitting given Lea's history of bringing other artists into her musical universe. Her debut featured names including Chase Coy, Tom Denney (ex-A Day To Remember), Kellin Quinn (Sleeping With Sirens), and Joshua Roberts (Magnolia Park), while the new album expands that collaborative spirit with contributions from Cassadee Pope, Tony Pietrafesa, Glitch Gum, Jack The Underdog, and K Enagonio.
What ultimately makes RollerCoaster Tycoon work is how comfortably Lea allows the ridiculous and the sincere to coexist. The album can be loud, colourful, cheeky, nostalgic, romantic, exhausted, and vulnerable without needing to choose one single personality. That mirrors its central metaphor: a rollercoaster doesn't move in a straight line. It climbs, drops, turns sharply, slows down, speeds up, and eventually brings you back to where you started.
The video-game concept gives RollerCoaster Tycoon a distinctive visual and structural identity, but it is Lea's songwriting that keeps the record from becoming a novelty. Beneath the neon colours and pop-punk hooks is an artist documenting the strange process of growing up while simultaneously trying to build a life around music.
With RollerCoaster Tycoon, lolitslea isn't simply revisiting the pop-punk past. She's constructing her own neon-colored version of it—one ride, one loading screen, and one questionable life decision at a time. The result is an album that understands that growing up isn't necessarily about finding a way off the rollercoaster. Sometimes it's simply about throwing your hands in the air and enjoying the ride.
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