Much has been made about the friendship between Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift since Rodrigo broke into the music mainstream with “Drivers License” earlier this year. That conversation was whipped into a frenzy today, when the production and songwriting credits for Rodrigo’s album Sour (which is set for release tomorrow, May 21) were unveiled.
Swift is credited (along with Jack Antonoff) on the song “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back,” which had fans thinking that Rodrigo, Swift, and Antonoff either worked on a song together or that Rodrigo sampled one of the tracks the latter two wrote together. However, neither of those speculations are accurate: Uproxx has confirmed that while Swift and Antonoff have writing credits on the song, they did not collaborate on the track with Rodrigo. Additionally, the song is an interpolation of “New Year’s Day” (which Swift and Antonoff co-wrote) and does not contain any samples of it.
That’s not the only track on the album where Swift’s influence made an impact: Rodrigo previously told Rolling Stone that the bridge of “Deja Vu” was inspired by that of Swift’s “Cruel Summer.”
While Swift isn’t on Rodrigo’s new album, Rodrigo is hoping to get on an upcoming Swift project, as she recently said she’d love to be involved with a new rerecording of Speak Now: “My favorite Taylor Swift album is Speak Now. I would love to be on a Speak Now song. I’m just so excited to listen to them, though. I love listening to the vault recordings and stuff like that. I’m gonna own my masters, but I’ll listen to songs I’m not putting out and be like, ‘Maybe I’ll do a vault thing when I’m Taylor’s Swift’s age.’”
Sour is out 5/21 via Geffen Records. Pre-order it here.