Olivia Rodrigo covers the new issue of Vogue, because her sophomore album, Guts, is coming out in September, and her first single (“Vampire”) is already out. I loved her first album, Sour. It was charming and youthful and it made me so nostalgic for my 1990s youth. While Rodrigo is definitely a Gen Z voice, her influences are rooted in her parents’ music, the music of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the wave of female singer-songwriters and pop stars of the pre-Britney era. She feels like the spiritual heiress of someone like Fiona Apple more than Taylor Swift. Anyway, I enjoyed this profile – Olivia is moving to New York and she’s enjoying being a 20-year-old in the city. Some highlights from Vogue:
She just bought a place in Greenwich Village: “I’ve got to live my Sex and the City fantasy,” she says. (For the record, she identifies as a Carrie and Charlotte mix.)
The rocket ride of teenage success: “Somehow, all of that totally pales in comparison to turning 20. The rest of it feels minuscule compared to that.”
Her love of her parents’ musical influences: She has a newfound Tori Amos obsession and Bruce Springsteen is “my biggest celebrity crush of all time.”
The rollback of reproductive rights: The reproductive rights rollback, she says, feels “actually insane—I think it’s sickening.” We talk about how many girls in her generation, and in my daughter’s, and in mine, will be “forced to give birth if they get pregnant. It is so scary. It’s such a terrifying reality.”
Heartbreak comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be ‘My boyfriend dumped me and I’m heartbroken.’”
Old before her time: “You don’t realize how young you are when you’re young.” She kind of can’t believe her own self, at age 12, “being on sets, surrounded by 40-year-old guys, talking about the traffic and the weather, learning to make small talk like an adult. I remember being in meetings when I was 13 and they were asking me what I wanted my brand to be, and I was just like, ‘I don’t even know what I want to wear tomorrow.’”
Bacon is part of her self-care routine. “I wake up and make my little matcha and I make bacon for myself, and then I sit at the piano and try to write something, even if it’s sh-t.”
Her belief that there was an expiration date placed on female pop stars at age 30. “I was under the impression that the younger you are, the more successful you’ll be in the music industry. I think I believed in these false ideas for a little while. The most painful moment of my life turned into my most successful.”
Whether she’s single right now: She makes a so-so gesture with her hand and says, cheerfully, “I don’t know!” Then she laughs, perhaps knowing this next part isn’t exactly true: “I don’t kiss and tell. It’s an interesting thing to think about,” she says, diplomatically, about the public interest in her relationships, which she weathered in extremity while she was still in high school. “I understand it. I could sit here and be like, ‘I don’t get why people do that,’ but I do it so often.”
She’s such a little professional, so smart about what she reveals and what she holds back. That was my impression of her when Sour came out too – there’s something about her which is old before her time, which comes from being a child actor and being surrounded by adults from such a young age. It’s good to watch her unlearn some of those behaviors too, to try to force herself to be her age, to make mistakes, to figure out how to grow as a person and artist. As for her move to New York… girls of her generation love the vintage Sex and the City series – it’s so prevalent among women in their early and mid-20s, a show which started when they were babies, basically. It’s wild. The power of reruns, I guess.
Cover & IG courtesy of Vogue.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmcWplZX56e86loK%2BhkZS%2FsLDRop6ol5%2BjrKmx0ZikqK6VlMGwq82erpixn6e4oLXVnpagp6SUwbCry6Ktnpedrqy0rdOclp%2BZnqmutMWO