Olivia Rodrigo just returned with the vicious single “Vampire” from her sophomore album Guts, which follows a complex, failed relationship.
Journalist Jia Tolentino addressed the lyrical content of this track in her new interview with Rodrigo for Vogue, asking if she’s in a relationship. Though Rodrigo couldn’t answer in a straightforward fashion, she reacted to having her relationships viewed in a public light, and revealed an unexpected fact about herself involving Harry Styles:
“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.” (Earlier, we’d talked about how her first internet passion was Harry Styles fan fiction.)
“I was upset about a certain situation and went to the studio alone and sat down at the grand piano, and the chords and melody and lyrics just poured out of me — almost like an out-of-body experience,” Rodrigo said about the song in a statement upon its release. “It’s a song about feeling confused and hurt, and at first I thought it was meant to be a piano ballad. But when Dan and I started working on it, we juxtaposed the lyrics with these big drums and crazy tempo changes. So now it’s like a heartbreak song you can dance to.”
Guts is out 9/8 via Geffen. Find more information here.