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slash perfect. That's R-O-T-H-Y-S
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You're listening to Intuit from Vulture in New
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York Magazine. I'm Sam Sanders. To
0:46
start this episode, let's go
0:48
back a bit to deep
0:50
pandemic. There
0:53
were a lot of before and afters during
0:55
the pandemic. The pandemic
0:58
itself was actually kind
1:00
of the before and after. But
1:02
in terms of pop culture, one of
1:04
my biggest before and after moments
1:07
during those years of pandemic life, it
1:11
was Olivia Rodrigo. ♪ I
1:16
got my driver's license
1:19
last week ♪ ♪ Just like we always
1:21
talked about ♪
1:23
One week I had never heard of her. And
1:25
then the next week, I couldn't stop singing
1:28
her song.
1:29
♪ But today I drove through the suburbs ♪
1:33
♪ Crying because you weren't around ♪
1:37
I mean, that was all driver's license. That
1:39
was the driver's license effect. This is Lindsay
1:41
Zoladz. She's a pop music critic at
1:43
the New York Times.
1:44
That song dropped
1:46
at a moment where everybody
1:50
was just still sitting
1:52
alone in their house, their
1:54
apartment. I don't know what wave
1:57
of COVID that was, Omicron or wherever
1:59
we were. And then Olivia's like, I'm
2:02
gonna help you scream. Let's go
2:13
So if we just hadn't really had a Breakout
2:17
out of nowhere star in a really
2:19
long time as she came You
2:21
know at least for people of
2:24
our generation as out of nowhere as you
2:26
possibly could she Was the
2:29
star or one of the stars of the
2:31
show high school musical the
2:33
musical the series I can't always
2:36
laugh whenever anyone says it. Let's try to get high
2:38
school musical the musical
2:41
the series Yeah, it would
2:43
be insane to think I might actually
2:45
have a shot at playing Gabriella.
2:46
I know even though I'd never
2:48
heard of this show I Love
2:54
drivers license and it was everywhere
2:56
on tick-tock on the radio on
2:58
Spotify It was even the subject
3:01
of an SNL sketch
3:07
I
3:26
There were two surprises one
3:28
is you know the initial surprise of drivers
3:30
license, you know and you're kind of like
3:33
is this gonna be a one-hit
3:34
wonder thing and The
3:36
second part of the surprise is just oh,
3:38
this wasn't a fluke. It's all good.
3:40
She has jams So
3:51
Olivia Rodrigo's second album
3:53
guts is out today and
3:56
I'm wondering in this moment brutal
3:59
out here How did she surprise
4:01
us so much before and
4:03
can she do it again? Was
4:05
sour and driver's license a fluke
4:09
or is Olivia really tailor
4:11
or Atlantis levels of a star? with
4:13
real staying power This
4:17
episode we ask all those questions and
4:20
take a closer look at this artist who
4:22
manages to be both quiet
4:24
and loud Young and old
4:26
at heart and a former Disney
4:29
child star who writes and sings
4:31
lyrics like these
4:44
Happy Olivia Rodrigo
4:46
week. Oh, yeah every week is
4:48
Olivia Rodrigo week Especially
4:50
this one. Yeah. Yeah I
4:55
Was telling you this before we officially started
4:57
but I remember hearing driver's license
4:59
being like, okay good for you big
5:02
song But the moment I knew
5:04
that Olivia was a force
5:07
was the second single called
5:10
deja-vu And
5:13
it was so nostalgic and there was
5:15
a depth and just layers
5:17
to the production and songwriting There's
5:20
this moment in the first verse where
5:22
the background vocals come in as
5:25
if they're laughing and singing at the same
5:27
time and it corresponds to the
5:29
lyrics in that moment It
5:37
was just chills this wasn't dumb stuff
5:39
everything she was doing was really smart Yeah
5:42
And I think that I love the
5:44
production on that song in the interplay between
5:46
as they're saying her vocals and
5:49
the production like it's creating this sort
5:52
of internal universe of Olivia
5:55
Rodrigo psyche that we're just like living
5:57
in in inhabiting this song and
7:26
Big
8:00
of a deal as Taylor Swift. Critics
8:02
loved it too. With all
8:04
that, how hard is
8:06
it going to be for Olivia Rodrigo
8:09
to live up to the expectations on
8:11
this sophomore album? Yeah, well,
8:14
there's a reason they call it the sophomore
8:16
slump. It's the big curse, you know, the
8:18
scariest thing for an artist, especially
8:21
with a whole album that
8:24
was embraced the way that it was. Like, sour
8:27
has become,
8:29
you know, it
8:30
is somehow greater than the sum of its parts.
8:32
You know what it feels a lot like? And
8:35
we'll talk about it more in a bit. It feels
8:38
a lot like the way Jagged Little Pill
8:41
was its own entire thing.
8:45
I'm broke, but I'm happy.
8:47
I'm poor, but I'm kind.
8:50
Yes, I loved You Oughta
8:52
Know. Yes, I loved One
8:54
Hand in My Pocket. But what I want
8:56
most with that album is to play it top to bottom.
8:59
And it felt like sour gave that to people. Yeah,
9:02
there was a lot of comparing it to
9:04
Jagged Little Pill. You know, that was a hard
9:07
one for Alanis to follow up
9:09
to. Oh, yeah. You're kind of,
9:12
once you have that success at the gate, especially
9:14
as a sort of precocious young
9:16
woman, and all of the pitfalls
9:19
in the industry that that suggests
9:22
it's really hard to follow
9:24
something up like that. But I think
9:26
she has a really good shot of actually doing
9:28
it because she's released,
9:31
I think, two of the best singles of the year in
9:34
the lead up through this new record.
9:36
So okay, let's talk about those
9:38
two new singles. Yeah, tell our listeners
9:42
what they are and what they sound like to you. So
9:44
first we get Vampair, which
9:51
begins as though it's going to be driver's
9:53
license part two, it's got the real melodramatic
9:56
sparse piano arrangement.
9:59
This added action
10:01
that's getting you to do it now has the
10:03
casual build of
10:04
people you pretend to care about just
10:06
what you wanted. But then it
10:09
really builds to something else
10:11
beginning in the second verse. It becomes like-
10:13
A different song. Unless it's like rock opera
10:15
song. Yeah. Every girl
10:17
I ever talked to told me, you were
10:19
bad guys and you called them crazy. God,
10:21
I hate the way I called them crazy too.
10:24
There's a real driving
10:25
force to it. Some really
10:28
fun rock percussion and just
10:31
the melodrama. She's
10:43
telling off this older
10:45
ex of hers that was using
10:48
her for her fame and all sorts
10:50
of barbed lyrics
10:53
that I'm not sure if I'm allowed to quote
10:55
or not. The
10:58
single's already out, you can quote it. Well, she always
11:00
has a way with a curse word. Which
11:03
lyric did you like the best? Well, she calls the guy
11:05
a fame fucker. A fame fucker,
11:07
please lead me dry like a goddamn
11:10
vampire.
11:10
Baby.
11:14
Baby. First I heard that. She calls him a fame
11:16
fucker, then calls him a vampire. And it's like, damn,
11:18
you are not over this man. You're
11:21
not. No. But I love
11:23
that song. I love, you know, I think you pointed out
11:25
before something that I think really
11:28
sets her apart from a lot of her peers
11:30
making, you know, sort of the bedroom
11:33
pop, like more kind
11:35
of quiet
11:35
music is that
11:38
she can really sing in this like musical
11:40
theater way. Yeah. You know, so there's
11:42
a really awesome moment in the
11:44
lead up to the chorus of vampire where
11:47
it's this escalating melody. Like you're
11:49
kind of singing along to an Olivia
11:51
Rodrigo song and then you get to a place where you're
11:53
like, oh wow, I can't hit that note. I can't do it anymore. Because
11:56
you can.
12:05
And she always kind of has that in her back pocket.
12:08
Like she's kind of stealthily a
12:10
really strong singer. Yeah. And
12:12
he's busted out like when she needs to hit that note, but
12:15
then can also like dial it back in this way.
12:17
A lot of these songs like Vampire, they
12:20
start out bedroom pop and she's singing softly
12:22
like all the bedroom pop girlies. And
12:25
then in the middle of the bridge or the
12:27
pre-chorus, she walks to
12:29
the front yard, leaves the bedroom and
12:31
starts yelling at her neighbor. And you're
12:34
like, yes girl.
12:49
What's the other single? How do we feel about that one?
12:52
I love the other one too. And again,
12:55
like the lead up to Sour, it's just
12:57
these two totally different registers
12:59
of hers. So we get Vampire
13:01
and then we get Bad Idea,
13:03
right? Which
13:04
is probably the most fun song
13:07
she's put out to date.
13:11
It's this really bouncy,
13:14
slightly self-deprecating.
13:15
It feels
13:18
like Brutal, which is the opening track on Sour.
13:21
And like this kind of sing talking that she
13:23
does is very brutal energy.
13:33
Brutal, I think is the sort of like primal
13:35
scream about like teen angst
13:37
and how teens are
13:38
depicted by adults in the
13:40
media and everything else. And Bad
13:42
Idea, right, feels
13:44
different for her because it's
13:46
this tale of her, you know,
13:49
making her mistakes, so to speak. It's
13:51
the tale of her hooking up with an ex, basically. And
13:54
also, sidebar, that's not a mistake.
13:56
That's just the way the world goes. Olivia, don't
13:59
hold that over your head. We've all been
14:01
there. That's being 20 years old. Come on.
14:03
It's being 39 years old
14:18
You know there I think that song is really fun
14:20
and Again, the sonic
14:23
palette of it is both in
14:25
her lane that we've come to expect but pulling from
14:27
these like New things too.
14:30
Like you said, there's almost this like speak sing
14:32
kind of like cheerleader chant quality to
14:35
it But it kind of sounds like
14:37
it could have been in like an early aunts
14:39
teen movie But there's this real rock edge
14:42
to it as well. I think
14:44
it's a really exciting Song
14:46
and like just proves that again. She's I
14:49
don't think she's trying to chase Trends
14:51
in the way that you might think
14:53
Someone following up
14:56
a successful debut like that would be
14:58
like it feels like she still just sounds very
15:00
much like herself
15:06
Stay with us we get into why Olivia
15:08
Rodrigo is a lowercase girl
15:11
with caps lock feelings That's after
15:13
the break. Also, if you enjoy this
15:15
show give us a rating and a review. We
15:17
appreciate it You know the drill. Thanks.
15:20
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Something that you wrote in your review of
16:36
Sour that I think carries over
16:38
to these two new singles we've heard
16:40
from the new album, it was
16:43
you calling Olivia a quote, lowercase
16:45
girl with caps lock feelings.
16:49
I love that. Define that. Explain
16:52
that.
16:52
I love it so.
16:53
Thank you. I mean, I think it's a
16:55
little bit of what we were at least
16:58
on the musical level, what we
17:00
were talking about before of this way she's
17:02
able to sort of calibrate
17:05
her voice. And
17:08
I think there is, especially
17:10
at the time that her last
17:12
record came out a few years ago, there
17:14
really was a sense that like the big
17:17
pop hits were getting quieter
17:19
and there's the sense, you know, it's the Billie Eilish
17:21
era.
17:26
It's Taylor Swift going for it. There
17:34
was a quieting down. Who
17:36
was the one where I was like, okay, I guess you can make
17:38
a whole album like this. Claro. Yeah.
17:41
God bless it. Very lowercase. Yeah,
17:48
like there was this kind of scaling back sometimes
17:50
like it can get a little boring you're
17:53
just only working in that palette. I
17:56
love that Olivia knows when to kick it up
17:58
and to hit the
17:59
the caps lock and just really start
18:02
felt things, start getting a little extreme
18:04
and excessive and loud. And
18:06
I think that that dynamism,
18:09
like you hear it in her songs, but I think
18:11
it's true as like the emotional
18:14
disclosure of her songs too.
18:24
She was sort of holding back at times
18:26
and I, you know, this is what I felt
18:28
when I was in the relationship, but now I feel
18:31
this and I think that's fun to
18:33
kind of toggle back and forth that way. Like you never
18:35
really know what to expect from her.
18:57
We should talk here now about
18:59
what I think might be a reason
19:09
Olivia
19:12
feels so nostalgic for
19:15
folks my age. I'm 39. She
19:18
has a co-producer and co-writer who was
19:21
about my age. His name is Dan
19:23
Nigro. He is a geriatric
19:26
millennial former emo punk rocker
19:29
who now writes with Olivia.
19:32
Who is he and what is his partnership? So
19:35
they are working together again
19:37
on this record. He was
19:40
in a band called as tall as
19:42
lions, which was sort of a Long
19:44
Island emo band. Is there
19:46
any song of theirs that I would know? I
19:49
don't even think I know any of their songs. I
19:53
have friends that are going to murder me for that
19:55
too. I was more on the New Jersey
19:57
side of the emos
19:59
divide. I was on the dashboard
20:02
confessional side. Well, yeah. That
20:04
man. Weren't we all? Oof, go ahead.
20:07
But I think that's a good point to bring up that
20:09
she's also like, in addition
20:11
to working in this bedroom pop idiom, she's
20:14
also reaching back to millennial
20:17
emo and pop punk that
20:19
I think both she has a natural
20:22
affinity towards that. But I think that's also
20:24
the role that Dan Negro is filling.
20:26
And I think that's a thing too.
20:29
Like I'm sure after the success of Sour,
20:32
every producer was knocking on her door,
20:34
like wanting to make a hit for her. Imagine
20:37
like an Olivia Rodrigo Pharrell album.
20:39
Oh my God. I liked them both. I would
20:42
have said no. Yeah. Yeah. And
20:44
I think that's another way that,
20:46
you know, by the smartest thing
20:49
for her to do was to not
20:51
switch up the aesthetic thing
20:53
so much and just keep the growth to
20:55
the songwriting and the experiences.
20:59
So I can't help
21:01
but think about Dan Negro
21:04
working with Olivia Rodrigo without
21:07
thinking about Jack Antonoff, who
21:09
has also become a man
21:12
in pop who is known for helping the
21:14
leading women of pop make
21:16
their music. Jack Antonoff worked
21:19
with Taylor Swift for her latest album, Midnight.
21:22
He's worked with Lana Del Rey. He's
21:24
worked with Lord. He's
21:29
one of at least two men, him and Dan, helping
21:31
the current reigning women of pop make
21:34
music that feels very much made for women
21:36
and girls. I
21:39
don't know what to think about that. Yeah.
21:43
I mean, it's like right with who you want to write with,
21:45
but isn't it ironic to
21:47
quote Atlantis that these two men are
21:49
all up in it. Yeah. And
21:51
I think what's even more ironic is like they're
21:53
both coming out of scenes or
21:56
a scene, absolutely the same sort
21:58
of pop punk emo. universe
22:01
that was really not friendly to
22:03
women at the time that we
22:06
were paying attention to it. Not only
22:08
were there
22:09
really not
22:11
any bands with women in them
22:13
or definitely not women fronting them, very,
22:15
very few, but there
22:17
was just a lot of active misogyny
22:20
in the music and everything was
22:22
blamed on the ex-girlfriend
22:24
or the girls that didn't like you. You
22:26
know, as someone that grew up with that music
22:29
and was trying to reconcile it
22:31
with my awakening feminism,
22:34
it was a very confusing time
22:36
because I loved that music, but the
22:38
lyrics and
22:41
the total lack of anyone
22:44
but a white man singing about
22:47
a straight white man, singing about
22:49
girls. The girl was
22:51
always the problem in the song. Always, yeah.
22:54
What was the reason that the guy in the song
22:56
was sad and angry? Totally. So
22:58
there's something fun, even though
23:00
I think
23:01
Olivia's music is
23:03
hitting on more of a mainstream pop
23:06
register
23:07
at the same time, it's just
23:09
a refreshing space to hear
23:12
a female perspective and even as
23:14
someone that I'm older than
23:16
Olivia Rodrigo and her target
23:18
audience probably, it's like filling
23:21
a need that I didn't get
23:23
that when I was her age.
23:31
When
23:34
we talk about this 90s emo punk
23:37
scene that really wasn't nice to
23:39
women, what for you was the
23:41
quintessential song from
23:43
that moment, from that era
23:45
for you? Wow.
23:47
I mean, there's so many.
23:49
I guess, taking back Sunday.
23:54
I loved that band and
23:56
I loved
23:57
their big sing-along songs, but it was
23:59
sort of...
23:59
cute without the
24:02
E. She has like the
24:04
violence right there in the title. Oh
24:06
yeah. And there's this kind of like, because
24:09
this girl broke up with me or this girl won't pay
24:11
attention to me, I wish her
24:13
dead in some gruesome way. Yeah.
24:16
What's your problem? Sing it right, sing it right. What's
24:18
your problem? What's your problem? What's your problem?
24:21
What's your problem? What's your problem? What's
24:23
your problem? You know, I've, I
24:26
had those CDs and I sang along to
24:28
those songs
24:29
and you know, the just all
24:31
of the
24:32
sort of ambient misogyny
24:35
that was inhaled every
24:37
day in the culture in that
24:39
time that I think we're at least
24:41
a little bit more aware of now.
24:44
Yeah. Or finding ways to balance
24:46
that out with
24:48
just
24:49
some more female perspective and just
24:51
some more like recognition
24:53
of the humanity on the other side of these
24:56
songs. It's gotten better a little
24:58
bit it seems. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
25:02
I want to, you know, we've already kind of talked
25:04
about where Olivia stands
25:07
compared to her direct peers
25:09
or predecessors from like the Disney machine
25:12
and how she kind of came out of that in a different way
25:14
than they were forced to. But
25:17
I want to just take a second to
25:19
compare and contrast with you, Olivia
25:21
Rodrigo to the two
25:25
women in pop. She is perhaps most compared
25:28
to Taylor Swift
25:31
and Alana Morissette. We've mentioned
25:33
them both, but I want to take a
25:35
second to see how much of
25:37
those comparisons are fair and how much of them
25:39
are not. Let's start with Alana. Let's
25:41
start with Alana. Yeah. Yes.
25:45
So yeah, when you hear people compared to Alana Morissette, what do you think?
25:48
I mean, I think
25:49
the sort of shorthand in
25:53
the culture that she has come to
25:55
stand for is like connection to
25:57
young women's anger. Like I think we sit.
26:00
you oughta know.
26:10
I think the Jagged Little Pill thing
26:13
was both, oh wow,
26:15
she made a whole album of songs
26:17
that show this
26:19
varied experience
26:22
of a young woman from all these different
26:24
perspectives, but also being
26:27
in touch with anger and having
26:30
some songs that are more quiet and
26:32
introspective and then a song like Good For
26:34
You that's I'm Gonna Call You Out On Your Bullshit
26:37
kind of thing and that's I think something
26:39
that we came
26:41
to associate with
26:43
Alanis as the Jagged Little
26:45
Pill era
26:45
and just a sense of really
26:48
having these
26:49
lyrics that feel a
26:52
little florid, a little diaristic
26:54
at times, but also really
26:57
barbed when they need to be and know, I think
27:00
Olivia really knows how to wield
27:03
words as weapons.
27:10
I feel like she's someone who is
27:13
observing, taking a lot in and then, you know,
27:16
sort of again
27:19
with the lowercase girl thing, like she's quiet
27:21
but she's stealthy. She
27:23
knows more than you think she knows and
27:26
she will deploy it at the right time. So
27:28
I think in some sense that's like a quality I
27:30
associate with that
27:33
era of Alanis.
27:40
Although we have to point out that Olivia
27:42
was not alive when Jagged
27:44
Little Pill came out. She would
27:46
have never told me that I'm gonna cry.
27:56
More about Olivia Rodrigo after the break.
28:07
I'm
28:12
very intrigued by what you have to say about this
28:14
because part
28:16
of Olivia's first album was
28:18
directly referencing Taylor Swift and
28:20
it seemed as if Taylor Swift never liked to speak
28:23
about that. So what we
28:25
do know and what we can say,
28:27
well,
28:27
Olivia
28:29
grows up as a Swifty. How
28:31
can you not? Yeah.
28:33
Big Swifty has explicitly
28:35
like
28:36
mentioned Taylor as her biggest
28:38
influence early in her career
28:40
and then has a
28:42
few
28:43
really direct nods
28:46
to her on Sour and also some indirect
28:48
nods. So we get the song
28:52
one step forward, three steps back.
29:03
She's actually like sampling
29:06
the piano line from the Taylor Swift song
29:08
New Year's Day.
29:11
And
29:15
you know, gives her songwriting credit there.
29:19
But your aforementioned favorite, Deja
29:22
Vu, I don't consider
29:24
that an interpolation of a
29:27
Taylor Swift song, but whoever,
29:30
I don't know if Taylor does this, her
29:32
team, like whatever, but they get
29:35
songwriting credit on Deja
29:37
Vu after the fact and say that
29:40
it is interpolating
29:48
It's
30:00
just the shouting and like the quality of
30:02
the shouting. The quality of the shout.
30:05
Yeah. And then there's also,
30:07
I believe good for you, like a similar
30:09
thing happened with Paramore where
30:11
they said it was... Oh, that one tracked. Yeah.
30:14
Yeah. I heard good
30:16
for you the first time and
30:19
I was like,
30:29
Where is Hailey? Yeah. Get
30:31
her on the phone. That one, I think holds a little more
30:33
water.
30:34
But I think the interesting point
30:36
is like, how much in
30:38
this era
30:39
do you explicitly pay homage
30:41
to your idols, especially when you're
30:45
in a position where your idols are becoming,
30:48
I don't want to say your competition, but your peers.
30:51
And so I think that there's been an interesting
30:56
little shift and I don't want to
30:58
start before there's not any, but it does
31:00
not seem like
31:03
there has been... Like I haven't seen
31:05
Olivia at the era's tour is
31:08
all I'm saying. She was in
31:10
a recent New York Times profile of
31:13
her. I think she was asked
31:15
about Taylor and she was like,
31:17
Oh yeah, I haven't gone to the tour yet.
31:20
I've been in Europe. And you're like, Okay.
31:23
Okay. I do wonder
31:25
though, with all of the you sampled me,
31:27
you owe me a songwriting credit, how much
31:30
of that is specifically Paramore
31:33
or Taylor and how much of that is just
31:35
how much the record industry has
31:37
changed. All of these labels are a lot
31:40
more litigious about
31:42
creative ideas. Like you think about Beyonce's
31:45
latest album, she had to cite
31:47
like a hundred samples. And I think
31:49
she did it out of caution because
31:51
we're in a moment now where labels
31:54
will really go after you in a way they
31:56
weren't maybe 20 years ago.
31:58
And I think a fun...
31:59
sort of, counter example of all this is
32:02
that another very,
32:05
like, I think a more explicit interpolation
32:07
on the song Brutal, a lot of
32:09
people are like, this sounds like Elvis Costello's
32:11
Pump It Up. Ah.
32:29
And he actually was like,
32:33
yeah, it does. And I don't care. I think it's
32:35
awesome. Like, he didn't have to be like
32:37
credited or whatever. So I think
32:39
like maybe it's slightly
32:42
a generational thing, but also just like,
32:45
all music is paying homage
32:47
to what came before. Like, it's a dangerous game
32:49
to start, you know, unless it's like really,
32:51
really explicit in the melody or
32:53
the lyrics or something like that. And even then, I think
32:56
it's case to case of whether you
32:58
want
32:59
to
33:00
be litigious or be Elvis Costello
33:02
about it. And most pop
33:04
songs only use
33:07
four chords. And there's only so many chords.
33:09
There you go. Exactly. Exactly. I
33:14
cannot help thinking about how
33:17
Olivia's new album is
33:20
going to be situated within
33:22
this year of pop culture. 2023 seems
33:28
like, culture wise,
33:31
it's just the year of the woman. The
33:33
two biggest tours in the country and the world
33:36
are coming from Beyonce and Taylor Swift.
33:45
The biggest movie of the year is
33:47
Barbie. Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie.
33:50
Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie. You go
33:52
online, large swaths
33:55
of the social internet are obsessed
33:57
with putting the word girl on everything.
33:59
I call this girl dinner Feral
34:05
girl summer what is a feral
34:08
girl you ask? I love being a woman
34:12
This year feels Women
34:15
girl and femme oriented Does
34:19
that make? 2023 a Perfect
34:23
landing pad for this new Olivia album
34:26
or something else? I Think
34:29
it remains to be seen but I hope I hope
34:32
I think that sort of
34:35
brings me to like
34:36
a quality of her music that I find interesting
34:38
and why again It fits in this moment,
34:41
but it's also like commenting on
34:43
it I think something
34:46
that she is able to do really
34:48
well and it feels like an
34:51
authentic part of being Young
34:54
and alive in the social media era
34:56
and in a time when you know, you're bombarded
34:59
by all these messages specifically
35:02
of self-love
35:02
and Therapy speak and
35:04
boundaries and all these things we're always talking
35:07
about like there's a sense in her music
35:09
Yes, she knows she's supposed to be
35:12
supportive of other women and get over her ex
35:14
and not give him power over the
35:16
way she thinks But it's really
35:19
hard and She
35:21
still is kind of giving voice to like the
35:24
difference between the messages that you're getting Particularly
35:27
as a young woman of like how you're
35:29
supposed to be in this positive way but
35:32
like the song jealousy jealousy
35:36
Which
35:41
is a really I think incisive
35:43
one office power where she's
35:45
talking about Comparing yourself
35:48
on social media and she's like, I know Their
35:51
beauty is not my lack, etc.
35:53
Etc. But still it hurt
36:01
She both speaks
36:05
to that moment
36:08
in the culture and the idea
36:11
of you have to feel
36:14
empowered
36:23
all
36:27
the time as a woman and
36:29
also speaks to the very
36:31
lived-in difficulty of living
36:34
up to all those messages. But
36:36
then I think just her being a person
36:40
and giving voice to these in
36:42
between human experiences is
36:44
kind of the most empowering thing of all.
37:00
As an aside, you
37:02
are a culture writer I admire
37:04
a lot who writes a lot about the culture and
37:06
women. How do you feel personally
37:08
about this 2023 being the
37:11
year of Barbie and Beyonce and Taylor and hot girl
37:13
and everything? How do you feel about it? That's
37:16
like a whole other episode. There's
37:18
like an hour long answer to that.
37:20
I think
37:22
there's a lot of positives and then I think
37:24
there's a lot of ways that the messaging gets
37:28
flattened a little bit. And again,
37:30
I think
37:31
if anything like Olivia's music,
37:34
that quality that I like about it of
37:36
just like knowing all the messaging
37:38
out there, knowing
37:40
what the greater narrative is on the internet
37:43
in pop culture
37:44
and
37:46
in some ways like trying that on and having
37:48
fun with it. But in other ways,
37:51
just letting yourself be a little exhausted
37:53
by all of it and sometimes say like, this
37:55
doesn't really fit how I feel
37:57
today though. I think that's something.
38:00
that I would love to see more
38:02
of and that I
38:04
think she's like providing like in
38:06
some ways like she's
38:08
in this summer of the woman
38:11
world but she's providing an antidote to
38:13
it at the same time it's not possible last
38:24
question for you many
38:26
listeners are going to hear this podcast interview
38:29
all about Olivia Rodrigo before
38:31
they actually hear Olivia's new
38:33
album what would you
38:36
advise them to listen for as
38:38
they play that album for the first time I
38:41
would say listen
38:43
to sour before yes because I
38:45
think that's really a snapshot of
38:48
her three to four years ago
38:50
and then be ready and open to
38:53
how she's changed in that time
38:55
like I got to see her on tour
38:57
when she played at Radio City I think
38:59
it was last summer and
39:02
I remember feeling like
39:05
I could tell in some of the banter
39:07
those songs were already the past
39:09
for her those were high school for her and
39:12
this is
39:16
her like you know
39:19
I'm 20 now she's
39:22
at the college dorm baby yeah
39:24
like I'm exploring the world and stuff
39:27
and I remember feeling like I think she's onto
39:29
something else and
39:31
I'm very excited to hear
39:34
whatever it is
39:35
about me
39:38
because you said forever now
39:40
I drive alone past your street
39:45
you said forever now I drive
39:47
alone past your street
39:51
thanks again to Lindsay Zolad's pop
39:53
music critic at the New York Times also
39:57
check me out on Today Explained
40:00
The Daily News podcast from our friends
40:02
over at Vox. I've been guest
40:04
hosting, and I have an episode in their
40:06
feed right now that you should listen to all
40:08
about how American
40:10
sunscreen is worse than all
40:13
the other sunscreen all over the world. Truly,
40:16
the FDA is involved. I tell you
40:18
all about it. Go check it out, today explained.
40:21
Wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Intuit
40:23
is hosted by me, Sam Sanders. The
40:25
show is produced by Danae West, Travis
40:27
Larchuk, Gabi Grossman, Jelani
40:30
Carter, and Taka Zen. Our fearless
40:32
editor is Jordana Hokeman. Our engineer
40:34
is Daniel Turek. Our music is
40:37
composed by Breakmaster Cylinder, and
40:39
the executive producer of audio at
40:41
Vox Media is Nishat Keroua.
40:44
Listeners, we are back on Tuesday with a brand
40:46
new episode. Until then, just start
40:50
randomly texting your friends' Olivia
40:52
Rodrigo lyrics, and see
40:54
what happens. Okay, bye.
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