Olivia Rodrigo hits back at trolls ahead of Glastonbury headline slot

Daily Mirror

12 hours ago

Olivia Rodrigo has opened up about why it's so special playing Glastonbury and the reason she has such a connection with her fans
Olivia Rodrigo has seen her music career explode from being the new teen star on the block to headlining Glastonbury in just four years - but she doesn't want her 'crazy life' to stop.
Olivia had her breakthrough when her song Drivers License debuted at number one and she has forged a reputation as an astonishing live performer and vital voice for Gen Z.
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Drivers License was released in January 2021 and endorsed by Taylor Swift, who said: "I say that's my baby and I'm really proud", referencing a meme featuring Taylor's own mum Alison.
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In June 2021, Olivia Rodrigo became the first female solo artist to claim three simultaneous UK Top 5 singles with Good 4 U, Deja Vu and Traitor. Young fans flocked to see her in London's Hyde Park on Friday night and the 22-year-old headlines the Pyramid Stage tonight (June 29). But the young global star is baffled by her fame admitting 'it's insane' to see audiences often crying at her shows.
The Californian, who will get the chance to impress millions of older music fans on the BBC this weekend, has resonated with fans mainly thanks to her astonishing ability to serve up raw records, emotionally outlining heartbreak, love and youth angst.
But while the tracks are 'deeply personal' and reflect many life experiences, she refuses to ever confirm names of the subjects of those hits.
Olivia had a knack for songwriting while she starred in series Bizaardvark (2016–2019) and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. However the chart star is keen to shut down talk she was a manufactured fame hungry child star pushed by parents. Olivia admits playing at Glastonbury, like her experiences on her currents GUTS world tour, makes her more connected to her art and audiences.
'It's incredibly powerful. I experience some of that out there and going on tour every night. It's just really, really insane. It just makes me feel less alone in my feelings when I write the song about some specific instance where I felt this really strong way 'I look out to the crowd and I see some girl who felt the exact same way - it just makes me realise that we're all so much more alike than we are different, and no one's ever really alone in their feelings.'
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Olivia is so moved by the live experience: 'It's a feeling that you never really get used to. It is really surreal. Songs are one of the most powerful mediums there are.
'You can write a song in 20 minutes and a huge crowd of 5,000 people could sing every word. It's really powerful. There's a lot of responsibility in that'
She continued: 'I definitely feel a real kinship towards women and girls. I feel like my songs are very feminine in the way that I write them. I hope everyone can relate to some parts of them, but I am very interested in writing about the feminine and stuff like that.
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'Just to go play a show and see a bunch of girls in the front row being really angry or crying or expressing all these emotions that are sometimes not societally widely accepted is a really beautiful, powerful thing and makes me feel really lucky that I do what I do. It's a crazy life and I am pinching myself all the time.'
Olivia's lyrics vividly describing betrayal, fury, loathing and heartache in relationships and love desires have connected to fans and critics. However she told Sirius XM, the people in the songs will always remain anonymous.
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'Explanation is never good for art. There are so many songs that I listened to at a young age where I'm like, wow, this songwriter wrote it just for me and my situation.
'And obviously they didn't, but why would I pigeonhole a song into being about this one thing in my life when everyone has their own interpretation? It's the beauty of music '
Even when fans guessed the names of ex boyfriends or female confidantes featured in hits, like Vampire, she sees it being less about her and more about life experiences.
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'I was a little worried at first putting that song out because it is kind of touch on this new fame element of my life.
'It's really tricky to write songs about that it can very quickly become unrelatable, but I think at the core of it, that song is really about being manipulated and regretting the decisions that you made in any relationship.'
Asked about how some of her exes and other pals have reacted to being mentioned, she calmly reacted: 'Most people have been pretty cool. I just feel like that's a personal thing. It's just like this person to person one on one things.
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'Songs are just songs. Lots of the times I write something and it's kind of like an amalgamation of lots of different people. Or I write a lot of songs that are of fantasy sometimes too.
'It's important for me to kind of keep my personal life private. I think I will dive as deep as I can into my songs, but I kind of just don't love talking about it.
'That's the boundary for me. It helps me feel healthy and good about my job and my privacy. I never think about a song coming out when I'm writing it. I'm always just trying to process the emotion and diving as deep as I can. And it's not until it's finished and produced where I'm really like, 'oh, how is this going to be in the world? How are people going to listen to this and interpret it?'
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'But I try to keep the songwriting process very insular and just about me and the song.'
Olivia's debut album SOUR reached Number 1 on the UK's Official Albums Chart in May 2021, in the same week that her single Good 4 U reigned supreme, making Olivia at age 18 years and 3 months the youngest solo artist in history to claim the Official UK Chart Double.
The road to success felt natural given her love for songwriting.
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'I've been writing songs since I could talk. I've written so many songs in my life, written so many bad songs, got a lot of practice. But it's this weird thing - I really believe that really good songs kind of don't come from you - they kind of come through you. It's kind of like something else. It's like a magical thing and sometimes you write a song and you're like, wow, I don't even know how that came to be, just kind of this beautiful flow. So I credit a lot of my songs to that sort of magic.
'I was probably 12 or 13 when I started really playing stuff on the piano. I started learning chords and really taking songwriting seriously and yeah, it's just been such a joy since then. I feel like I learned so much about songwriting every day. Even now I just feel like there's so much that I don't know and so much that I'm curious about. So it's a lifelong journey.'
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Even aged 13, Olivia was on a mission to examine her inner feelings
'I still have them on my phone…I'd write all these feminist songs about all these people that wronged me or all these issues that I had and I'm like, you're in sixth grade. What's going on?'
She added: 'My parents are super into music and they definitely influenced me and definitely influenced my taste so much. My parents are so not stage parents at all. They don't have a stage parent bone in their bodies. They are just so chill.
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'I was so driven and they were always like, 'if you don't want to do this, we'd be happy not to drive your auditions every week.' They never applied any pressure and they've just been so wonderful and supportive and I just owe everything to them. It made me more self-motivated. I think sometimes when your parents tell you to do something, you never want to do it. When you're 16 you're like, eh, I'm going to do my own thing. But I was always very self-motivated.'
Olivia remains humbled by her meteoric rise especially how her debut Drivers License became a generational anthem and earned the Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2022 Awards.
'That was such a huge moment for me and something that I'll remember when I'm 85 and I love that song so much. Just for me, I wrote that song and loved it because it just so acutely expressed what I was going through at the time. The fact that it resonated in the way that it did is just so meaningful. I owe so much to that song and it opened so many doors for me.'
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Olivia has managed to maintain a low profile despite her global success.
'It's always a double-edged sword. It's true. Life has gotten difficult in some ways, but easier than others, and I just really happy to be where I am and have all of these opportunities. Yeah, it's a really interesting thing. I think that I also sort of got a soft introduction to it because of my childhood acting.
'I was maybe a little more prepared. Being in control of your life and career. That's something that's just so meaningful to me and I feel really happy that I'm in a position where I can have that. All I can do is be myself, I think, and write songs that I like. And I think the fact that people gravitate towards them is amazing, but I can't really think about it too much. It's so overwhelming.
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'Honestly, a healthy level of dissociation goes along way. You just can't really read into all of that too much. You kind of just have to put your horse blinders on and focus on what you can control because so much of it just beyond anything you can really fathom or control.'
Olivia has been praised by many icons for speaking to her generation including Carole King, Green Day, Alanis Morissette, Jon Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, Michael Buble and John Legend.
'I honestly can't really comprehend that. I grew up listening to Carol and Tapestry was one of the first vinyl records that I ever owned.'
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Olviia, speaking on the XM CBS channel in the States ahead of her Glasto show, sees Morissette and No Doubt frontman turned solo artist Gwen Stefani as a great inspiration for longevity in music.
'I love Alanis. She's so gracious too. I look at her and I talk to her and I'm like, that's how I want to live my life. I feel like she's got it right. With Gwen I really love he way that she sort of straddled rock and pop in a really cool way. I think she's super adventurous and takes risks, so I really look up to her. But who's to say, I don't know. I don't know where I'm going to be tomorrow, let alone in five years.'
Olivia teased that she is ready to make more waves in another entertainment genre soon. She said: 'I love telling stories in songs, and if there was a story that I felt like really resonated with me in a film, I would love to do that too. I don't quite know yet, but I'm very open to it."