Switched on Pop - Olivia Rodrigo’s Good Ideas

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Everyone seems to be getting Olivia Rodrigo wrong. She's one of the few pop stars who has made it big in the current era of fragmented music streaming, but so much of the narrative has been about whose songs she's stealing from, whether it be Taylor Swift, Elvis Costello or Paramore. Rodrigo's new album Guts arrives next Friday: while we wait patiently, we take a close listen to her new singles "vampire" and "bad idea right?" to subvert the narrative. These songs show that she isn't stealing from pop music, but rather uses a deep repertoire of musical predecessors to write very crafty music. Songs discussed: Olivia Rodrigo – vampire Olivia Rodrigo – bad idea right? Olivia Rodrigo – driver's license Olivia Rodrigo – brutal Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Pump It Up Olivia Rodrigo – good 4 u Paramore – Misery Business Olivia Rodrigo – deja vu Taylor Swift – Cruel Summer Radiohead – Creep Scala & Kolacny Brothers – Creep Lana del Rey – Get Free David Bowie – Space Oddity Elvis Presley – That's When Your Heartaches Begin Roy Orbison – Oh, Pretty Woman Talking Heads – And She Was The Breeders – Cannonball Liz Phair – Supernova Wet Leg – Chaise Longue The Beatles – Twist And Shout Rage Against The Machine – Killing In The Name Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm a songwriter Charlie Harding.

I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Nate, I've had at least two big missed opportunities that I've really regretted not interviewing someone before they broke out into being a major pop star. Oh, okay. I'm very curious. Who are these people? I'm just going to tell you one of them today. It's the former Disney High School, The Musical, The Musical, the series actor turned mega pop star, Olivia Rodriguez, whose lead single off her last album, Driver's License, was sent to me in advance, and I didn't click with it. You were just like, delete, delete my future.

I called my driver's license last week. Listen, I'm sorry, I rushed to conclusions. I thought, this is a ballad. Ballads aren't big right now. I just thought it wasn't going to hit. I hardly even paid attention to it, and obviously I was wrong. I forgive you.

I honestly haven't forgiven myself yet. Her 2021 album, Sauer, was one of the biggest albums of the. the year. She had many singles over a billion plays. She is a sensation. And I'm not the only one, though. A lot of people, I think, have gotten Olivia Rodriguez wrong. A big part of her story has become this narrative about who she is taking inspiration from with lots of accusations of intellectual theft for riffs from Elvis Costello. To chords and stylings borrowed from Paramore, which she was forced to give interpolation credits.

to vocal stylings, to which she's had to give credit to Taylor Swift. Yeah, there seems to be a lot of anxiety of influence surrounding this artist. And, you know, when I talked to Elvis Costello on this podcast last January, he said something that stuck with me. He said, for me to take issue with Olivia Rodriguez using the sound that's been used by so many other artists would be, quote, idiotic. So make of that what you will. Yeah, I think Olivia. isn't someone who's stealing from pop music,

but rather has a great repertoire of pop music. You know, all of pop is about taking the genres and influences, you know, and assimilating them into new compositions. And I think this is a good time to revisit her music because she has a new album coming out in just a few weeks. It's called Guts.

And she has two singles, which are available now. What I want to do today is listen very carefully to these two songs, really break them down, and see how Olivia uses the language of pop to build her own unique stories. I want to start with a song, Vampire. It's the lead single off the new album. It's yet another ballad following in the success of songs like Drivers' License and DejaVu,

which have collected over 3 billion streams on Spotify. If you're mad about someone repeating themselves, doing yet another ballad, tell that to Adele or Celine. I think this is a great ballad. Like so many ballads, it's about an extra-reliad. relationship, something has gone wrong, and she compares her past lover to a monster. Let's hear how she builds the world of vampire. We begin with these quiet, stewing chords with a piano melody that pushes forward and creates momentum.

That chord progression for me foreshadows that something is amiss. The harmony is kind of eerie. Yeah, there's something about these chords that feels a little unsettled. There's some chromaticism. There's some sense of, like, where is this going? Right, because the chords, to begin with, are all major, which would suggest sort of bright and happy. The first chord is an F to A major. But A major doesn't belong to the key of F.

It introduces, as you said, chromaticism, these off colors, borrowing from minor keys. So we go from F major to A major to B-flat major, to B-flat major. Everything is bright until it descends down to B-flat, minor, the saddest chord of them all. Yeah. And just to understand the power of that chord progression, we could imagine what the song would sound like if it stayed all in its key. It would start on F major, go to A minor, B flat major, and then maybe we'll say go to C.

And it's just a little cheesier, kind of corny. A little vanilla, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not dark. It's not vampiric. Exactly. It's got no fangs, Charlie. There's something about this chord progression where it feels like she's got three major chords in a row, three steps forward, and then a minor chord, one step back.

So one of these chords tell us, they to me, say that she's trying to move forward, but she keeps getting stuck in the past. And talk about moving backwards. This chord progression is also kind of a classic four-cord loop. Yeah, yeah. That was probably first kind of introduced by Radiohead in their song, Crete. Not a lot of core progressions stand out and have associations to a single song. Right. But when I think of these chords, I think of them as the creep chords.

And you can hear how Olivia Rodriguez may be borrowing those chords from how creep was performed in the social network soundtrack. I feel like this chord progression has an inbuilt narrative, right? Radiohead are talking about, I'm a creep. Then on the second chord, the one that has this weird chromaticism, says, I'm a weirdo. And then sort of figuring out where do I belong, it goes to this B-flat major, the third major chord. they're saying, what the hell am I doing here? And on the sad B-flat minor, I don't belong here. I think when we both heard vampire, we immediately associate it to creep.

But Radiohead were not the first to use this set of narrative chords. In fact, some of the turmoil that we hear in these harmonies has turned into real conflict in the past. The 1974 song, The Air I Breathe, by The Hollies, uses the same chords and a similar melody to creep, so similar that they actually settled a lawsuit against Radiohead out of court for an undisclosed sum. In an about-face, Radiohead's publisher later unsuccessfully

went after Lana Del Rey for using the same chords in her song Get Free from 2017. So yeah, you can't copyright a court progression, but these chords definitely have strong associations for listeners and publishers. But it's worth noting that these so-called creepers, creep chords have earlier precedents as well, like in David Bowie's space audity, for example. This is Major Tom to ground control. I'm stepping through the door. With some variation, but yeah, the building blocks are definitely there. Yeah, and it has that feeling of the ascension. I'm floating, like going out into the moon.

And there's melancholy in Space Oddity, because Major Tom, of course, floats away and loses radio connection. Okay, so that's interesting. So this chord progression goes a little further back than Radiohead. Even goes back to Elvis Presley. Ooh. Let's check out that's when your heartaches begin. If you find your sweethearts of a friend. That's when you're hard age.

Well, that's pretty cool. Yeah. And another, you know, pretty kind of dark narrative here. But again, it's like the lyrics move with the harmony. It's like, if you, nice major chord. find your sweetheart. Oh, that sweetheart is that bright major chord that we don't expect.

In your arms, yet another major chord, and then of a friend. And you get that sad minor four chord. The revelation that your sweetheart is not in your arms, it's in someone else's arms, and that's when your heartaches are going to begin. Charlie, it's also worth noting that these chords are very special to us.

Do you know why? Oh, I don't know. Because when we were young and doe-eyed, when we recorded the very first episode a switch on pop called Heartbreak. Yeah. Which I don't necessarily recommend listening to, but one could. Were they so inclined?

We discussed Casey Musgrave's song, I Miss You. That's right. Which also uses this chord progression. And we revealed its connection to creep. So this is like, these chords like the oer text of this whole stupid podcast. Okay. And I also feel like I'm doing the thing that I said we shouldn't be doing with Olivia Rodrigo, which is.

comparing her work to everybody else's. But I want to figure out what is she doing with these fundamental four chords? Yeah. Right? Well, it's pretty savvy, right? It's like here's a song about a vampire and she's using these chords that we might have this subconscious connection

to being creepy. Like, that's pretty smart. Let's figure how she styles them with her melody and lyrics. Okay. I hate to give the satisfaction asking how you're doing now. How's the castle built off people you bring?

Withering. I hear this like, you have the stewing, quiet chords, and then she comes in, she's singing quietly, but she's at this rapid pace. I hate to give the satisfaction asking how you're doing now. She's singing in 16th notes. It feels like she's trying to go somewhere, even though this music is just sort of slow and brooding.

It's kind of like she's furiously scribbling in a journal in a quiet rage or something. Right? I like that, yeah. And if you look at her melody, she's just sort of hanging around these two notes. C, C, C, C, C, A, C, A, C, A, C, A, C, C, A C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C. Exactly. And then she emphasizes that note that's off, telling us that, yeah, something is not quite right here.

That's the, that's the chromatic note. That C-sive, not part of the major scale. So she's singing along in a faster rhythm than the underline. and chords. Journaling. But she is emphasizing that something is wrong here, foreshadowing the monster, perhaps, and the lyrics do the same. She places her ex-lover in a castle.

And she describes a tortured six-month relationship in a forbidden paradise. So she's leaning hard into this metaphor of the vampire, but she hasn't revealed it yet, She's building towards this idea of her monster. She's placing him in a castle where she's been tortured. And she's singing it like she's stuck at the turret of this castle, almost like whispering by anxiously trying to escape. And ever so slowly, like a great ballad, the stakes keep on rising. The production builds in the pre-chorus as she slows down her rhythm,

but increases the intensity of her voice. It becomes consistent. Each moment of this pre-course just keeps building. The production gets bigger. Yeah. The harmony shift. She leans into her title metaphor that this lover only comes out at night. More terrifying since come in in the background.

She curses. She is so good at the well-placed curse. She's done this in deja vu. She's done this before in driver's license. She really likes a strategically-placed. did F-bomb. This one is particularly good, though, because with all of this foreshadowing of the vampire, finally, in this moment where things cut out, he sinks his teeth in, and then with a great

turn of phrase, she calls him a blood sucker. Yeah. And of fame. Can I say this? The podcast is okay. I was wondering if you would. I think you should. I don't feel comfortable.

I knew you wouldn't. You want me to say it? You can say it. Fame fucker. Ooh. Charlie just got to be red. That one hurts, right? Charlie's a good Protestant boy.

Everything builds up to this moment and truly cuts out. It's just her alone. And she tells us who he really is. Yeah. A vampire. I agree. That moment is breathtaking. It also brings you from the, like, world of the Transylvania Castle to, like,

in just a single puppet. In a way that is really effective. I like how you say that it takes the breath out of you. I mean, she says that she's being bled dry, right? I feel like in some ways the song could almost end here. It's like character is deceased, but instead, the song does something we rarely hear in a top 40 pop song. It changes tempo. The song almost more than doubles in BPM with a kick drum that tells us that things are going to pick up.

And then the piano picks up too, and a bass comes in. And she's singing faster and faster in this new tempo. It feels as though we have gone from the eerie part of the castle to almost like a chase scene. Like I feel like we are now trying to escape the grasp of this vampire. Very cinematic. Very cinematic. The whole power of this song isn't even revealed until about halfway through when the beat finally drops. The stakes just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

It's happening in the lyric. It's happening in the melody, it's happening in her delivery, and it's happening in the tempo and production. Yeah. And she does something that nobody does. She builds her song to a bridge. Like, I feel like most people use the bridge as like, okay, we need a little breather.

Right. No. The bridge is almost the biggest part of the song. Ooh, I'm excited. This is where the chase takes off. She gives us more of this great, blended, ex-lover, vampire metaphor. You can't love anyone because that would mean you had a heart. It could also be heard.

as another connection back to driver's license, which also featured what I might call an iconic bridge. So this is like continuing that tradition. It's a ballad. It's got a powerful bridge. It's like right in her wheelhouse. When you write in this style of everything is building all the way through, the question for me, especially in a song about a vampire,

is how's it going to end? He's dry like a goddamn vampire. Whoa. Right? A build to nowhere. It's kind of like the start of a Jewish wedding. Huh. Huh.

Hap. Hap. Except it's just like, you know. Blacks out when you get in it. Music is highly subjective. You can hear it. However, I'm hearing this as the song has all this early foreshadowing of the vampire. She finally reveals the monster in the chorus.

The production pitch. picks up in this chase scene, in the final chorus, she's belting as loud as she possibly can, like a scream for help. And then, you know, like, teeth sink in, goes to silence. I think that the song has a not great narrative conclusion for the protagonist. It doesn't feel like she has outrun the vampire.

It feels like the vampire caught up, and then at the end did a little victory dance. It's a true horror story. It's very unsettling. I love what she's done here. She's taking this very identifiable chord progression and made it into a whole new monster. Yeah.

Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieve, greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you.

Okay. Ready? Ready? Do not sugarcoat something for me. No. No. No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Nate, are you ready for an Olivia Rodriguez vibe shift? Take me there, Chuck. Vampire is not the only single that we've heard so far.

We also have the song, Bad Idea, Right? Well, well read. Very different sound here. Vampire was very heightened and dramatic. This is like so casual and conversational. Yeah, right. I feel like we've gone from the stylings of piano ballad to sort of new wave, post-punk, very riff rock kind of thing.

Definitely irreverent. I actually pulled some of our listeners, and they said that they were hearing some Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman, some talking heads as she was, the Breeders Cannonball, Liz Faire's Supernova, and last year's indie hit, Shez Lounge by Wetleg.

But again, I think this is probably the wrong way to approach Olivia Rodriguez. I think that it's more than just these set of influences. question is, how is she using this riffy post-punk styling to tell the story and bad idea right? And I think, like vampire, we get a clue from the very first couple notes. This riff feels kind of driving, propulsive, oscillating between a one chord and a four chord, harkening back to like classic rock and punk, as you said. You said the word oscillating, going back and forth between these two chords. It's maybe a little bit indecisive.

It's like, am I this one thing or am I this other? Where are we going? I could give you that. Can't make up its mind. Kind of fits with the vocal styling that we get too, right? And what's the very first thing we hear? What's that sound effects? Is that like a screen door opening or something?

What is it? Yeah, that is definitely like opening a door. I'm like, hey, sorry, I just got here. My bad. What does that symbolize? That she was hanging out with this guy when she shouldn't have been or something? We're going to find out, aren't we? Oh, okay.

I'm just pleased I got it right. Because usually I hear that and like then listeners write me and they're like, that was a flare gun in SOS, SOS, obviously. And I'm like, it was a depth charge or something. And then there's, of course, the Taylor Swift pen click debacle, which we still get emails about. In blank space. Well, if we got this one wrong, we're going to have to retire.

Yeah. All right. So we've got opening sound effect, this indecisive back and forth, riff, rock, guitar. And she's singing in a completely different style. than we heard on vampire. And then the first lyric is haven't heard you in a couple of months.

It's kind of like, hey, haven't heard you in a couple of months. It's one connected idea. She's just walked inside and she's hardly even singing here, right? It's extremely conversational. Which is fitting to this genre. You would hear this kind of just spoken

off-the-cuff kind of verse in a talking head song and a very, very insoucient kind of blaze. Yeah. And things continue in this conversational nature and this indecisive riff until we get to the pre-course. The chords start descending, falling down, as she is screaming to herself, I can't even hear my thoughts, I'm feeling anxious and overwhelmed, I'm going to make a decision to visit this ex who I've decided,

you're probably not so good for me, but this is going to be fun anyway. It's almost like a sequel to Vampire, you know? If you are into celebrity gossip, you can definitely, definitely go down that whole rabbit hole about, well, who is the person? Is it this person? Is this other? So probably what you said, Nate, is going to put you in hot water, but these are pop songs. We can hear them how they want. I think they do pair well with each other. So the whole question is, what is she going to do in this song? Is she going to get back together? What do we think? Yeah, duh.

Oh, yeah, so you're asked that. I thought that was a rhetorical question. Fuck it. It's fine. The chorus is just these exulting, joyous, like dozens of Olivier and Rigo's all saying together. Oh, how great is this? Yeah. I thought we were just friends, but I tripped and fell into her. I know. This song is so self-aware.

I love it. So meta. And also, there's another connection to vampire. There's a well-placed F-bomb right before the chorus. It's like signature Rodrigo here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about earlier how I think she's great at deploying pop song cliches that advance her narrative. One of them, which is maybe a little silly, is the stop text painting.

You know I'm talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah. When the artist says stop and the music stops. That's awesome. And one of my favorite videos on YouTube is like the six-minute super cut of every time this has been done in pop music. So this one is like a super pop cliche, but I like how she uses text painting in the next pre-chorus when she's talking about how she can't hear herself think. My brain goes, uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-ah-ah-ah. All of her vowels are gated.

You often hear that in trance music. They call it a trance gate, but it has that quality of like she's interrupting her thoughts that she can't have a coherent thought because our protagonist here is so excited about making potentially bad decision, right? I love it. And then finally, my favorite use of a pop cliche is how she builds into her final chorus to give us that overwhelming sense of joy and accomplishment in making. a bad but fun decision.

I say you tonight. It feels like a throwback to twist and shout. Come on now, shout. And just like the Beatles, you know, she gives us this shouting chorus full of joy. And then she has this way of almost affirming this bad decision and how great it feels with the music dropping out.

The song is silly and irreverent and fun. And I think it's appropriate that it's climatic. moment is a guitar solo in the style of Tomorello. You hear the same kind of thing and rage against the machines killing in the name of. And a song about pent-up energy, we'll say, and leading to a climactic release, some people will choose to belt in the highest range of the register,

but I think that the guitar solo is an appropriate stand-in for what is happening when someone trips into their bed. Of course, one of my questions, like, with vampire is how does it end? It doesn't end. It just fades out. It leaves us with the impression that this bad decision

could keep on going on again and again. So going back to that very first sound effect, the screen door, that's her like showing up at her ex's house. Yeah, exactly. That's good. I like that. Yeah. Isn't that great?

It's a very funny, slightly dark, very self-aware track. I think it's really cool. And she's flexing all of this musical knowledge, leaning into this language of pop music over, you know, 75 years from Elvis, the Beatles, Elvis Costello. Sure, they're all in there, but she's using these ideas to tell this story. She takes these cliches from different genres, and she wraps them in this idea of making a bad decision to revisit an ex-lover. That's a good musicians do, Chuck.

You know, I think there is one comparison that is probably appropriate. A lot of folks have compared her to Taylor Swift. Olivia Rodriguez has named her as an influence. She's had to give her credits on songs that she has supposedly borrowed from. But I think what's interesting here is way more than just a young woman singing diaristic songs about love and lovers. I think listening closely to both of these tracks has shown me that Olivia Rodriguez is a great songwriter who knows how to use the language of pop music to match the narrative of her songs. And we just have two of those songs right now off of guts.

I'm looking forward to hearing what's coming next on the end. album. Switched On Pop is produced by Rana Cruz, edited by Art Chong, engineered this week by Chris Shirtleff. Our illustrations are by Iris Gottlieb, community management by Abby Barr, and our executive producer is Nishat Kerwa, a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. You can find us on the old social media at Switch on Pop. And on our website, switchedonpop.com, where we have some fun merch. We'd love for you to pick some up. Tune in again next week, and until them, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. The Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Caroline Herrera,

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