Olivia Rodrigo Says ‘I Cringe, But I’m Free’ as She Opens Up About Love, Dating & New Album
On how turning 23 feels different than 22:
“I just feel a lot less afraid, in a good way. The year is off to a great start.”
On playing cards as “a metaphor for life”:
“If you’re too busy looking at someone else’s cards, you’re not going to look at your own.”
On what was on her mind while making the new album:
“I was really excited to write about joy, love, and passion in a way that I had never really done. Most of my big songs are about being sad, angry, heartbroken.”
On whether she finds it hard to write about happiness and whether it’s cringier to be happy or sad:
“It’s not hard to do when I’m sitting there by myself in my room, but it was never the stuff that I put out. Sometimes I listen back to it and I cringe….It’s cringier to be happy. I cringe, but I’m free. All of my favorite love songs have an element of sadness, and that’s what makes them so beautiful. A great love song has so much emotion behind it that it could go either way. I want to make love songs that you can cry to.”
On her third studio album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love:
“We really edited the hell out of this album. There was so much more joy in the songwriting. There are some songs that are plain old sad but also some songs that are just plain old fun.”
On how her songwriting process for you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love differed from her last two albums:
“We didn’t have time for revisions on SOUR. The whole world was watching. I wrote and we just fucking recorded and put it out. Then with GUTS, I was under so much pressure, like, Oh my god, I’m never going to be able to make another good song. It wasn’t even making music to make music. It was making music to please people or prove something….With this album, I actually was like, ‘I’m done with the sophomore one. Now I can have fun again.’ I was writing songs the way I did when I was 16, purely for fun. There were some beautiful moments, like, ‘Whoa, it’s flowing out,’ which feels like catching a butterfly in a net.”
On how she has changed from the person who made SOUR five years ago:
“I was so young then and felt like the world was on my shoulders and that I had to have everything together. I was motivated, but there was fear. Now I feel a lot more self-assured. My passion and work ethic come from a place of positivity rather than a scared mindset.”
Click through to find out what else the “drop dead” singer-songwriter had to say…
Posted To:EG evergreen Madison Hu Olivia Rodrigo Slideshow