The internet’s favorite spicy Pisces—aka Olivia Rodrigo—recently opened up about how she drew from her romantic relationships in order to pen the tracks on her second studio album, GUTS, which is set to be released on September 8.
During a recent convo with the New York Times, the songstress admitted the instant success she encountered after dropping her debut album SOUR made her feel as though she needed to experience more in life—namely, so that she’d have an arsenal of inspiration to draw from.
“I had such a desire to live and experience things and make mistakes and grow after SOUR came out, I kind of felt this pressure to be this girl that I thought everyone expected me to be,” the musician confessed to the outlet. “And I think because of that pressure, maybe I did things that maybe I shouldn’t have—dated people that I shouldn’t have.” (‘Kay, say what you want but miss Olivia is COMMITTED to her craft, people!)
“I’m very tame,” the Disney Channel alum added before further explaining a lot of her new album is “about reckoning with those feelings and coming out of that disillusionment and realizing the core of who I am and what I want to be doing and who I want to be spending my time with.”
In case ya missed it, Olivia has already teased a few songs off of her latest project: “Vampire,” which was released on June 30, and the subsequent relatable-AF track “Bad Idea Right?,” which debuted on August 11. The former single, in particular, became an instant anthem in its portrayal of how an ex took advantage of her and exploited her fame. (While the subject of the song isn’t explicitly named, fans widely speculated the song was about Olivia’s ex-boyfriend, Adam Faze, at first…but it sounds like they were wrong. An insider dished to People that “Vampire” didn’t actually draw inspiration from Olivia and Adam’s relationship or breakup.)
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During Olivia’s interview with the New York Times, the “Good 4 U” singer further explained she was uncertain about whether she should reference her fame at all on the new album, as she was worried it was “self-indulgent.”
“I’ve always tried to write about the emotions rather than this weird environment that I’m in,” she said. She wound up deciding to go ahead with the ballad because, for her, the point of songwriting is “to distill all of your emotions into their simplest, purest, most effective form.”
Olivia separately opened up about “Vampire” during an earlier appearance on The Julia Show podcast and recalled how there was a “debate” about including the now-iconic “fame fucker” lyric. “Some people said, ‘It kind of isolates you from people, you can’t really say stuff like that in songs if it’s not relatable,’ yada, yada, yada, which I totally get and I saw where they were coming from,” she began.
“I think the song isn’t about fame fucking or whatever, I think it’s more about someone being manipulative and sucking you dry, using you for all your worth. I think that that’s a universal theme, and I also think fame is more easily accessible now than it has ever been. It’s not just people in L.A. and Hollywood that have to deal with that,” she added.
Honestly, if I could take a shot every single time Olivia said something #relatable during her interviews, I would be very, very tipsy hammered.
Assistant news editor
Gretty Garcia is the assistant news editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers all things news, entertainment, and pop culture. Before joining Cosmo, Gretty was a social strategist for Mrs. Dow Jones and a features and special projects editor at Editorialist. She holds an MS from the Columbia Journalism School and studied art history at Harvard College.