Pop star Olivia Rodrigo tried writing love songs for her new album, then life got messy

NEW YORK – Olivia Rodrigo was the first breakthrough pop star of this decade, a one-time Disney Channel star who set a fresh template for specific, confessional songwriting on a mass scale.

On billion-stream smashes like Drivers License (2021) and Good 4 U (2021), the American singer-actress, now 23, built a career on the back of two complementary musical impulses: exasperated power balladry and exasperated pop-punk.

On her first two albums, Sour (2021) and Guts (2023), her songs had targets; the fury she channelled nailed a frequency that activated a legion of young female fans.

Now on the other side of what she calls her first “big-girl relationship”, her third album, You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love, out on June 12, takes a step back and then zooms in.

Across 13 songs, she assesses an ultimately doomed relationship from beginning to break-up in real-time detail: the raw thrill of a new connection (Drop Dead, which debuted at No. 1), the abandon of falling hard (Stupid Song, U + Me = <3), the unexplained itches (Maggots For Brains, My Way), the stomach-churning realisations (Begged), and the acceptance of the end (Cigarette Smoke).

Initially, she had hoped to write about newfound contentment in a way that was not dull. “That was a daunting task for me,” she told Popcast, The New York Times’ pop culture show, in her first in-depth interview about the album. As “someone who was very known for writing break-up songs and being angry and sad”, she said, “I wanted to prove to myself that I didn’t have to be miserable to write a song that I liked.”

About halfway through the album-writing process, her personal story took a turn. Working for a third straight LP with Dan Nigro, a producer and songwriting collaborator, she went back to tinker and tell a more true story.

“After writing break-up songs,” she said, “we had the fun challenge of going back and actually tweaking some of the love songs on the record and making them a little more honest and more sad and creepy.”

Rodrigo cited both the 1991 book Simple Passion by Nobel Prize-winning author Annie Ernaux and romance comedy-drama series Sex And The City (1998 to 2004) – specifically the relationship between couple Miranda and Steve (played by Cynthia Nixon and David Eigenberg respectively) – as touchstones.

“I was really inspired by just all of the ways in which love makes you insane and miserable,” said Rodrigo, who began dating 22-year-old English actor Louis Partridge (the Enola Holmes films, 2020 to present; Disclaimer, 2024) in 2023.

To match the feeling, she opted for a 1980s new-wave palette that has a more vibrant and complicated range than the hard-charging rock she has relied on until now.

She also discussed the many ways in which her creative process intersects with the extracurricular noise of pop superstardom, whether it is managing relationship drama or accusations of pilfering songwriting gestures from her one-time idol Taylor Swift, which allegedly forced Rodrigo to retroactively give the American superstar a co-writing credit on Deja Vu (2021).

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

This album strikes us as a chronological, structured mini-narrative. Are you writing those things in real time as the experiences are happening? Is that how you apply creativity to a lived experience?

For the most part, it is chronological and in the order in which it happened in my life, and it’s the first time that’s happened. I write songs to process my feelings, so every day when I come and I sit at the piano or I go to the studio, it’s like: ‘What is burning in me to say right now?’

There are certain moments on this album that are really living in the 1982-to-1985 world. You’re getting The Cure, maybe a little Talking Heads and Devo. What does that sound and style signal to you that the pop-punk that you’ve been playing with previously doesn’t?

There was something about the restraint of it that felt nice. I was just really obsessed with that type of music while I was making it. I did (music festival) Glastonbury with (The Cure singer) Robert Smith, which was insane. And I’d always been a fan of The Cure, but since meeting him and getting to hang out with him, I went back and listened to all those new-wave bands. I was living in England at the time, so obviously I got a lot of English band inspo. For me, in songwriting, the sentiment always comes first. And so I knew that I wanted to write songs about how it felt to be in love. And love feels like that to me: that vibe, the emotional quality of it.

How do you look back on Guts? It felt like you wanted to make a capital-A album with a beginning, middle and end. And we wonder if any of that came from either how Guts went or didn’t go for you.

Sour, that was crazy. At the time, I didn’t realise how crazy it was. And I was 17 when it all happened. So I have a lot of compassion for myself. That was so much pressure. I think putting out (Guts), I felt a little like, ‘Oh God, I’m never going to make anything as big and as good as Sour and blah blah blah’. But looking back, I am so proud of so many of those songs. I think All-American B**** is my favourite song I’ve ever written. Bad Idea, I remember thinking at the time, ‘Oh, it’s too weird’. And I love that song so much now. Just having a little space totally changes your perspective on it. I’m really proud of both of those records. I don’t think I’ll ever regret writing honestly about where I am in my life.

What is the most difficult thing that’s happened to you that your career prevented you from dealing with properly?

I’ve led a very charmed life. I haven’t had anything really awful happen. This is in no way ‘woe is me’, but I think I feel really sad that I didn’t really have a childhood. It reveals itself in certain ways over time: types of interactions, types of relationships. It’s just a push and pull, like I live one of the most amazing lives, I get to travel the world and have all these incredible experiences, but I wasn’t in high school, I didn’t have a good group of friends in high school.

I have a wonderful group of friends now that I’m really lucky and grateful for, but I do feel like I’m so ahead in certain areas of my life, and then in some social areas, I’m a little behind. Because I was a homeschooled child, it was a very lonely upbringing, and I think that’s why I wrote so many songs too. It made me feel less alone and it made me feel understood.

You’ve been so forthcoming about your influences and people who are your heroes and what you’re trying to live up to. But it’s come back to bite you a couple times, in terms of songwriting credits or album covers, people trying to call you out for borrowing a little too much. How have you pushed through what we assume were pretty hard times, with your creative vision being called into question?

Yeah, it was a really hard time, but I don’t know. I’m a fangirl, I love music and nobody can take that away. It sounds so cheesy, but I feel so lucky that I get to do what I do, and I love so many songs and I’ve grown up being surrounded by awesome music and awesome bands. I would be writing songs if nobody listened and everyone hated them, because it’s what I love to do.

There is a lot of public speculation about your relationship with Taylor Swift. In pictures from a recent Paul McCartney concert in Los Angeles, you guys are walking out at the same time, and then there’s people on the internet being like: ‘Are they facing each other? Are they facing away?’ How do you view that layer of scrutiny?

I really don’t read too far into it. I think if I dove into every internet detective sleuth that got things right or wrong about my life or any of my relationships, I would just go crazy. There’s just not enough time in the day.

Is there a frost between you and Taylor? How do you view that, now that you’re a few years removed from the initial ruptures?

I try to not let it get to me or upset me. I just try to keep on truckin’. It was so long ago, there’s no use in harping on it. I just try to make songs that I love, and try to be kind and good to other people, and supportive of other people. At the end of the day, I think that’s all you can do. NYTIMES