Olivia Rodrigo recently appeared in a roundtable of fellow songwriters for The Hollywood Reporter, which included Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Jon Batiste, Cynthia Erivo, and Julia Michaels. During their group discussion, they were asked to recall the first album or song that they bought. Rodrigo praised another musician who inspired her a ton — especially very early on.
She goes on to describe the feeling of discovering Lorde through her album Pure Heroine and her hit song “Royals,” which is now over ten years old.
“I remember hearing that song on the radio at the time,” Rodrigo shared. “It was one of those pinch me moments where you always remember, a snapshot memory, like, ‘Oh my God, what is this?!’ Changes the trajectory of your life.”
“I remember listening to it as I first started writing songs and just being blown away by her lyrics that are just about being a teenager living in the suburbs,” she added. “I just remember never hearing my life be put into a song like that where it just made being young and doing these seemingly unimportant things feel so sacred.”
As for some of the other roundtable answers, Erivo listed Brandy’s Never Say Never, Dua Lipa was tied between Alicia Keys’ Songs In A Minor and Nelly Furtado’s Whoa Nelly, and Eilish mentioned Awolnation’s “Sail.”
Check out Rodrigo talking about Lorde around 6:50 in the full roundtable video above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.