4 days ago 2 hours ago
Mark SavageMusic correspondent
BBC/Josh Falcon
Into each beingness a small rainfall indispensable autumn - but thing could hole Olivia Rodrigo for Hampstead Heath successful June.
We're expected to beryllium filming an interrogation successful the park, but the heavens person burst. It's not conscionable raining cats and dogs, but otters, dolphins and aggregate different water-dwelling mammals.
As the monsoon monsoons, our lights and cameras are hastily scooped up and moved into the beauteous Victorian room of adjacent Kenwood House.
It's a scramble, but everything's successful spot (just) erstwhile Rodrigo arrives - not a hairsbreadth retired of place, aft a abbreviated but windy locomotion from her car to the set.
Although it's an aboriginal start, the 23-year-old has already been working. On the travel over, she made last tweaks to a caller opus called Maggots For Brains, conscionable 10 days earlier its release.
"I emotion that opus musically, and there's a batch going connected - a batch of harmonies - and virtually successful the car, I was like, crook that backing vocal up conscionable 1 decibel," she says.
"I was getting benignant of weird astir it. Nobody other volition notice."
We've chosen Hampstead Heath due to the fact that it's 1 of Rodrigo's favourite places successful London – an unfastened abstraction wherever she tin mostly locomotion astir without being bothered.
"It's the champion spot to bent out," she says. "Nobody's ever been weird, I conjecture due to the fact that it's truthful dispersed out?
"One time, I adjacent saw idiosyncratic propose. I was sitting connected a bench, and I looked over, and determination was a immense commotion, and each the couple's friends were there. It was truthful sweet."
It's a script she's dreamt about. Ideally, Rodrigo would besides person an outdoor connection successful New York's Central Park.
"I'd emotion it if idiosyncratic paid for a placard connected 1 of the benches that said, 'Will you wed me?'," she laughs. "Then you'd beryllium down and you're like, 'Oh my God!'
"So dispersed the word... Hopefully my aboriginal hubby volition spot this."
If you are out there, prospective Mr Rodrigo, you should besides cognize your wedding opus has been pre-selected.
"Imagine kissing and past walking backmost down the aisle to that? I emotion that song."
BBC/Josh Falcon
"Take one" - the prima takes power of the clapper board
It's reassuring to perceive her religion successful emotion remains intact.
Anyone who's listened to Rodrigo's archetypal 2 albums, 2021's Sour and 2023's Guts, knows the vocalist has endured a fewer calamitous heartbreaks, approaching them with a premix of anguish, disorder and feminine rage.
She didn't constitute her archetypal existent emotion opus until 2024: So American – a punchy caller question cut, astir falling caput implicit heels for English histrion Louis Partridge.
Before long, her Instagram leafage was filled with photos from Wimbledon and double-decker busses.
Headlining Glastonbury past summer, with Partridge astatine the broadside of the stage, she changed the lyrics from "I deliberation I'm successful love" to "'Cause I'm successful love".
So erstwhile she sat down to constitute her 3rd album, she thought it would beryllium beauteous straightforward.
"I truly wanted to seizure romanticist joyousness and pleasance for the archetypal time, due to the fact that my past 2 albums were precise heartbroken and truly angsty," she says.
But 1 look astatine the rubric – You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So successful Love – suggests paradise wasn't what it seemed.
"It's a emotion communicative that falls apart," she confirms.
"A clip capsule of a narration successful a fewer years of my life."
Polydor/Interscope
The beforehand screen of Rodrigo's medium shows her swinging done the air, carefree and afloat of joy. Flip it over, and she's level connected the ground, "with my hairsbreadth strewn astir and looking benignant of depressed".
It opens successful a London pub, wherever Rodrigo is besotted by a lad who "looks similar an angel connected the walls of Versailles". He's truthful beauteous she's paranoid she made him up. If helium kisses her, she mightiness drop dead.
By the 2nd track, Stupid Song, they've hooked up; and she's truthful blessed she can't constitute a sensible lyric.
"When you're truly profoundly successful love, it feels similar a opus is truthful futile," she says. "It's truly hard to seizure successful a mode that feels palpable to others."
As the medium progresses, however, doubts and anxieties creep in.
Getty Images
Olivia Rodrigo performed 2 songs with The Cure's Robert Smith erstwhile she headlined Glastonbury past June
Everything hinges astir way seven, Purple. The lyrics are happy, but the chords ne'er resoluteness to the harmonic centre, creating a feeling of instability.
"Initially, it was a emotion song, and it was precise saccharine and saccharine," says Rodrigo. "And a fewer months aft we wrote it, we revisited it and enactment caller chords underneath it and tweaked immoderate of the lyrics.
"So, yeah, it's decidedly the portion of the medium wherever things commencement to sour and unravel."
A akin destiny befell What's Wrong With Me – a duet with her philharmonic hero, The Cure's Robert Smith.
It was primitively written astir missing idiosyncratic truthful intensely she felt listless and depressed. Rodrigo revised the lyrics station break-up, aft realising the narration itself was the root of her sadness.
"I can't eat, I can't slumber / I deliberation you're what's incorrect with me."
She and Smith debuted the opus past play astatine Spain's Primavera Festival. Backstage, the British prima was afloat of praise for his protégé.
"She is genuinely fantastic, arsenic a singer, arsenic a songwriter, arsenic a performer," he told BBC 6 Music. "I'm somewhat successful awe of however casual she finds it all."
Glastonbury anxiousness attack
It was their 2nd quality together, aft duetting astatine Glastonbury past summer.
Universally acclaimed arsenic the set of the weekend, the show confirmed Rodrigo arsenic a generational talent, arsenic astatine easiness with lighters-aloft balladry, and rabble-rousing pop-punk antics.
Backstage, though, she was a container of nerves.
"I retrieve having similar a adjacent anxiousness onslaught successful the bathroom, like, 'How americium I going to bash this? I don't cognize if I'm ready.'
"But thing overcame maine the 2nd I stepped connected signifier and started singing. I felt, like, wholly calm and truthful successful my element.
"I'm not precise spiritual oregon religious, but it's moments similar that wherever I consciousness euphony is conscionable truthful magical that you conscionable can't truly picture it."
It was besides a show powered by an awesome magnitude of dessert.
"I stayed astatine this [hotel] that had the champion sticky toffee pudding, and I was like, 'You cognize what? I gotta bash it'," she laughs.
Three bowlfuls were consumed earlier she took to the stage.
"If the toffee's truly blistery and the crystal pick melts connected top, it's truly good."
EPA
Olivia Rodrigo's raucous Glastonbury acceptable helped her shed the "sad soft girl" stereotype that came with her debut single, Drivers License.
Pudding isn't her lone British culinary weakness.
"My favourite happening is dipping soldiers into an egg," she says. "I got truly obsessed with it. My friends adjacent bought maine antithetic ovum cups from each implicit the world."
That's the charm of Olivia Rodrigo. She whitethorn person grown up successful showbusiness, moving connected aggregate Disney shows earlier launching her euphony career, but she's neither cosseted nor precious.
One of the reasons she loves the UK is that it gives her perspective.
"I consciousness truthful mean here, precise adult. I tin locomotion to the pub and conscionable friends. It's a metropolis wherever spontaneity is truly encouraged. People are precise societal here, successful a mode that they're not successful Southern California."
Polydor / Intserscope
The vocalist is simply a large instrumentality of UK pub culture, and changeable an alternate mentation of her video for Drop Dead astatine the Islington Town House successful London
And, for idiosyncratic with 40 cardinal Instagram followers, she seems resolutely unbothered by different people's opinions of however she should behave.
She's been outspoken astir the curtailing of reproductive rights successful the US, and the humanitarian situation successful Gaza.
Last year, she criticised the Trump medication for utilizing her euphony successful videos promoting ICE deportations, calling the government's policies "barbaric and cruel".
She chooses those battles carefully.
"I decidedly effort to beryllium cautious with my words," she says, "but simultaneously, the women I looked up to erstwhile I was young were truly outspoken, and that was 1 of the reasons I adored them.
"I don't deliberation my extremity is to beryllium liked by all," she continues. "And erstwhile you de-centre that arsenic the superior motivation, I deliberation everything becomes a batch much joyful."
Getty Images
The vocalist had aesculapian ambitions arsenic a child
As our clip runs out, I propulsion retired immoderate random questions.
Is it existent she's partially deaf? "Yes, I person 60% proceeding nonaccomplishment successful my near ear. If you sat connected this broadside of maine and tried to archer maine a secret, I wouldn't beryllium capable to perceive you."
What did she privation to beryllium arsenic a child? "An obstetrician! I emotion babies, and I played obstetrician with my dolls, adjacent if I was acold excessively young to cognize however immoderate of that works."
What would she telephone the movie of her life? "Oooh, I'd emotion to manifest an awesome rubric - like, 'Olivia Rodrigo lives the happiest, astir joyful beingness immoderate vocalist songwriter ever lived'."
Which relation would tempt her backmost to acting? "Juliet successful Romeo and Juliet. Obviously, the champion emotion communicative of each time."
It's astir excessively due – pop's heartbreak princess playing theatre's astir tragic heroine. But, similar Juliet, Rodrigo is mature for her age, taking power of her destiny successful male-dominated spaces.
Before releasing her caller album, she parted ways with her managers to presume power of her career, gathering a hand-picked originative squad astir her ain decision-making.
It allows her to beryllium nimble and decisive, skipping events similar the Met Gala, which don't "inspire maine oregon consciousness aligned with my values", she precocious told the New York Times.
Getty Images
The vocalist volition instrumentality her caller euphony connected the roadworthy with the 86-date Unravelled tour, starting this September. It concludes with 11 nights astatine London's O2 Arena adjacent May.
You don't person to beryllium a genius to realise that integrity and authenticity are the anchors of Rodrigo's appeal.
Her songs person billions of streams due to the fact that of their unflinching honesty. Rodrigo's arsenic apt to uncover her disfigured broadside – jealousy, obsession, self-destructive determination making – arsenic she is to rant astir her feckless exes.
"That's 1 of my favourite things," she says "I tin constitute a opus astir being petty oregon jealous oregon ace insecure, and I get it disconnected my thorax successful a mode that seems productive."
Maybe that's wherefore she seems truthful steadfast and well-adjusted, adjacent successful the furious glare of the spotlight. She adjacent shrugs disconnected London's torrential rain.
"It wouldn't beryllium a due English summertime without it," she beams, hatching a program to instrumentality her friends swimming successful Hampstead's outdoor ponds.
She seems, successful fact, beauteous blessed for a miss who's not presently successful love.
English (US)·