Olivia Rodrigo hasn’t caught Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour ‘yet’ because she’s been ‘busy’

Olivia Rodrigo recently chatted with the New York Times to promote her sophomore album, Guts. The Times piece is one of the nicest, most positive pieces I’ve ever read about a young pop star, and Olivia comes across really well. The Times exhaustively lists her rock/pop bonafides and all of her big-name rock star fans. The OG Riot Grrls see Olivia as a retro/continuation of that ‘90s sound and energy, where you’re angry as f–k about the sleazy guy you dated. Speaking of, there are a lot of rumors about what Olivia’s first single from Guts is really about. The single, “Vampire,” is seemingly about someone in or around the music industry who sucks the life out of young women. There are a lot of people who think that Olivia was slyly referencing Taylor Swift, although obviously there are tons of other guesses. I bring this up because Olivia kind of brushed off Taylor’s name in this piece. Some highlights:

Advice from idol, Jack White. “He wrote me this letter the first time I met him that said, ‘Your only job is to write music that you would want to hear on the radio.’ I mean, writing songs that you would like to hear on the radio is in fact very hard.”

Writing and performing “Brutal”: “It was super heavy when we were rehearsing it,” she said of her live band, whose members are all female or nonbinary. “I remember tears welling up in my eyes and being like, this is so powerful. This is what I wanted to see when I was a girl scrolling YouTube when I was 14.”

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The music she loves: She heaped praise on Snail Mail (“‘Valentine’ is one of my favorites”), Joni Mitchell (“I’ll literally get emotional”), Kathleen Hanna (“I love Bikini Kill”), Gwen Stefani (“‘Return of Saturn’ was one of the albums that made me want to make music”), Depeche Mode (“I’m hooked”) and Billy Joel (“He is everything”). She name checked Beyoncé and Sleater-Kinney, Simon & Garfunkel and Sweet. “Oh my God, I listened to ‘Ballroom Blitz’ 10 times today,” she exclaimed. “I have no idea why.”

Rock star: She’s “always loved rock music, and always wanted to find a way that I could make it feel like me, and make it feel feminine and still telling a story and having something to say that’s vulnerable and intimate.” She beamed, her eyes bright under light winged makeup, talking about how artists she admires are “using rock music, but they’re not trying to recreate a version of rock music that guys make.”

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The Taylor Swift thing: Taylor Swift and Paramore may have been inspirations on “Sour,” but after the album’s runaway success, those inspirations suddenly gained writing credits on two songs. Asked if she had caught Swift’s Eras Tour, Rodrigo was brief: “I haven’t yet,” she said, quickly adding that she’d been busy. “I’m going to Europe this week.”

On “Vampire”: She said she was at first hesitant to write about someone exploiting her celebrity in “Vampire,” because she feared the experience was self-indulgent. “I’ve always tried to write about the emotions rather than this weird environment that I’m in,” she explained. But the point of songwriting “is to distill all of your emotions into their simplest, purest, most effective form.”

[From The NYT]

Yeah… the Taylor Swift stuff is notable, right? In a world where it feels like everyone in the music industry has to kiss Taylor’s ring, Olivia hasn’t caught an Eras show and she makes a point of shutting down that conversation. Maybe “Vampire” isn’t about Taylor, but it feels significant that it could be and Olivia isn’t saying anything to dissuade that notion. Anyway, I have such affection for Olivia. I love that she’s so f–king angry at the world. Do your thing, young lady.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.