Olivia Rodrigo launches a fiery barrage of pinpoint lyrical missiles at unnamed targets on her laceratingly catchy second album, GUTS. However ask the Grammy-winning 20-year-old singer to enter specifics about who she’s put a bullseye on in her lyrics and the singer who snarls “I wanna meet his mom/ Just to tell her her son sucks” on the brand new album’s “Get Him Back!” is just not going there.
Akin to in a brand new Rolling Stone cowl story, wherein the interviewer makes an attempt to get a solution to a burning query about whether or not Olivia is at present feuding along with her musical inspiration Taylor Swift. “I don’t beef with anyone,” she stated in regards to the singer she stated she was “in awe” of continually in an 2021 interview with Ryan Seacrest; the pair additionally exchanged letters, Swift gifted Rodrigo a hoop she phrase whereas recording Crimson and the singer later gave Taylor (in addition to producer Jack Antonoff) co-writing credit on the Bitter songs “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back” and “Deja Vu.”
“I’m very chill. I keep to myself,” Rodrigo defined, regardless of heated rumors that the GUTS track “The Grudge” is a couple of Swift fallout. “I have my four friends and my mom, and that’s really the only people I talk to, ever. There’s nothing to say. There’s so many Twitter conspiracy theories. I only look at alien-conspiracy theories.”
Pressed additional on how the co-writing credit on her debut occurred — she additionally retroactively gave Paramore a co-write on “Good 4 U” — Rodrigo demurred. “It’s not something that I was super involved with,” she stated, making it unclear if her hand was compelled within the matter. “It was more team-on-team. So, I wouldn’t be the best person to ask.”
As for whether or not she would possibly do the identical to a younger artist in the event that they had been clearly impressed by one in all her songs, or if she’d slough it off as Elvis Costello did when the clear similarities between his “Pump It Up” and her “Brutal” had been identified, Rodrigo stated she doesn’t assume she would. “But who’s to say where I’ll be in 20, 30 years,” she stated. “All that I can do is write my songs and focus on what I can control.”
The profile additionally featured a co-sign from Katy Perry in regards to the intense strain to follow-up a debut album, with Perry recalling that she confronted comparable angst whereas recording 2010’s Teenage Dream. “You have your whole life to make your first record, and then maybe two years to make your second — while going through a real psychological change as well,” stated Perry, who added that she provided to be Rodrigo’s pop music mentor and sounding board. “Like, ‘Oh, my God, I can buy my mom a car,’ and, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t have to have the stress from my past.’ But it’s a mental jungle out there.”
For the report, Olivia stated, though there’s a track on GUTS referred to as “Teenage Dream” — and he or she calls Perry’s album of the identical title one in all her favourite sophomore collections — it was completely a coincidence. “We thought about changing the name,” she stated. “If someone looks up ‘Teenage Dream’ on Spotify, there’s no way in heck that my song’s going to pull up first.”
Rodrigo additionally famous that the objective on GUTS was to make a extra “playful” report than her debut, Bitter, which she stated was “definitely a breakup record, much to my chagrin.”
One of many pop third rails Rodrigo would additionally not contact was the hypothesis that her breakthrough hit from that album, “Drivers License,” was impressed by a love triangle that allegedly concerned her, her ex, fellow Excessive College Musical: The Musical: The Collection co-star Joshua Bassett and one other Disney actress/singer, Sabrina Carpenter.
“I mean, that’s a tricky one. I actually, genuinely did not read the article you’re talking about,” she stated of an story from 2022 wherein Bassett stated he had a serious well being disaster because of the backlash from strangers in regards to the alleged love triangle. “But, yeah, all that stuff was really crazy. It’s all been handled privately… Handled isn’t the right word, but it’s just not something I like talking about publicly. I take all that stuff seriously, but it happens in privacy. I’m not going to put out a statement. That’s phony. We’re all just people at the end of the day. I deal with it on a person-to-person level that people on Twitter don’t see.”
