|
Post by Admin on Oct 6, 2021 22:28:05 GMT
Along with bigger criticisms and worthwhile conversations come a slew of smaller ones, including that everyday brand of speculation, gossip, and shaming. Olivia has been vocal about her many influences: Taylor Swift, Lorde, 2000s pop-punk. She interpolated Swift’s “New Year’s Day” on Sour, crediting the musician on “1 step forward, 3 steps back.” But then, months after her single “deja vu” came out, she added Swift, Jack Antonoff, and St. Vincent to that song’s credits — all three wrote “Cruel Summer.” In April, before the credit, she had praised Swift’s “yelly vocals” in the bridge as inspiring her own. Then it happened again. The pop-punk “good 4 u” became a massive hit, drawing comparisons to a variety of artists who popularized the genre; months later, Paramore’s Hayley Williams and ex-guitarist Josh Farro popped up in the credits for writing their 2007 song “Misery Business" (their teams had been talking before the song came out). The internet would like to make this a conversation about originality. TikToks mash-up the songs, but the implication isn’t that these songs would have been great together on Glee, it’s that Olivia’s music is somehow lesser for being able to see its ancestry. But as The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Switched on Pop cohost Charlie Harding explained in an episode of Decoder, the debacle is really about how the music industry works, how copyright cases typically go, and rules about the difference between inspiration and replication. Olivia’s also coming of age in a time where the music industry is more litigious than ever, a direct result of the 2015 case that found Robin Thicke and Pharrell’s “Blurred Lines” guilty of copyright infringement on Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.” It’s another thing that’s out of her control — but it’s still her name on the song, and so the conversation will continue to center her for as long as she remains relevant to it. Ultimately, however, none of this would be happening if Olivia hadn’t written a hit. What that means for Olivia the human is that she’s reached a level of fame where she has become an avatar for larger conversations. She’s the photo at the top of the article. But what good does defensiveness serve? “It’s tricky,” Olivia says, careful with her wording. “Writing songs about how I feel has always been easy and fun for me, and I think the business side of music has been something I’ve had a harder time learning.” She continues, treading delicately around the contentious topic, “I’ve been sort of growing through that this year, but I’ve just been trying to remember that I write songs because I love them. I feel lucky I get to do that and be a songwriter and a performer for a living. …. At the end of the day, I feel it doesn’t have too much to do with me.” The discourse is on her mind in the days after our interview, when we talk again on the phone so she can explain more about her feelings on how people talk about her music. “I was thinking a lot about some of the interpolation questions you asked, and I feel like I didn’t answer them as truthfully as I could have,” she says. Interpolation — when you record part of a song created by someone else and use it in a new way — is different from sampling someone else’s work in its original form. They’re really common in music, Olivia says, and she tries not to get caught up in what people say. “I think it’s disappointing to see people take things out of context and discredit any young woman’s work,” she adds on the call. “But at the end of the day I’m just really proud and happy to say that my job is being a songwriter … All music is inspired by each other. Obviously, I write all of my lyrics from my heart and my life first. I came up with the lyrics and the melody for ‘good 4 u’ one morning in the shower.” Meanwhile, Olivia is going to keep talking about all the artists she admires. “What’s so beautiful about music is that it can be so inspired by music that’s come out in the past,” Olivia says, lighting up at the table. “Every single artist is inspired by artists who have come before them. It’s sort of a fun, beautiful sharing process. Nothing in music is ever new. There’s four chords in every song. That’s the fun part — trying to make that your own.”
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 6, 2021 23:18:40 GMT
On Sour, comparison is a throughline — to girls who get chosen over her, sure, but also the landscape of social media that encourages voyeurism, body shaming, and endless, desperate jealousy. Like so many things, it hurts teenage girls the most. When Olivia said, “God, it’s brutal out here,” she wasn’t wrong. “Who am I if not exploited?” she asks in “Brutal,” and in a fitting homage during the music video, she wears the same Roberto Cavalli dress that Britney Spears wore to the 2003 American Music Awards. Olivia has been following Spears’s legal journey to have her conservatorship removed, and thinking deeply about how society treats young girls. “I’m so excited to see her making leeway in her case,” Olivia says about Britney’s highly-publicized conservator case. A couple weeks after we met, Britney’s father would be suspended as her conservator after a decade of control. “I think it’s a step in the right direction. I’m so happy that Britney’s case is getting so much attention, and I just hope that she gets all the justice she deserves and lives the best life she possibly can.” The whole thing has larger ramifications for the way we treat young women celebrities, and young women who aren’t celebrities, and the average teenage girl who watches all of this play out while she’s scrolling through social media. “It’s one example of this culture that so often tears down women in the spotlight for sport,” Olivia says. “As a society we definitely have to reexamine the way we treat women in the entertainment industry, and not just for ourselves — it’s unhealthy for young girls to be looking at all that stuff in the media. It paints a bad picture.” “It’s so frustrating to see young girls held to a completely different standard than other people. Social media is making it even harder for young girls to grow up,” she continues. “I don’t even think it’s about me being like, ‘Oh, I’m hurt to see people say mean things about me or my friends.’ It’s really toxic for young girls to open their Snapchat app and see the articles about young women who are just sharing their art and existing in the world, and watching them being torn apart for doing absolutely nothing.”
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 7, 2021 1:53:34 GMT
On a personal level, she takes care of herself by separating who she is as a person from her social media presence and how she’s perceived online. She has struggled with feeling like that was her whole identity, numbers and pictures determining things about herself. When she gets low, she hangs out with people who know her, who see the goofy Olivia at 3 a.m., laughing at nothing. When she imagines her future, it’s not one in which she mentions fame or adoration; it’s one where she’s with family, maybe writing songs for other people, the way Carole King and Julia Michaels have thrived. “I think it’s so cool to be a part of helping someone else bring their vision to life,” Olivia says. “That’s my dream. That’s my ideal life. I just wanna be, like, 30, in a cool mid century-modern house with two babies and a husband, writing songs that I like, and having brunch with my girls on the weekends.” Here’s what Olivia wants to talk about more than anything else: what she can control, what brings her closer to knowing who she is and what boundaries she can draw. Songwriting, and her unshakable belief in the power of music and its ability to make you feel, or take you back in time, or put a soundtrack to your life. She’s most passionate when she talks about what music allows her to express: “We’re so much more alike than we are different. At the core of it all, we’re all feeling the same feelings of fear and sadness and loneliness and happiness and love.” Olivia’s favorite song on Sour is “Traitor,” and it conjures a memory. She’s hiking with her mom in Salt Lake City — where HSM’s first two seasons filmed — when she brainstorms the wrenching hook, “Guess you didn’t cheat, but you’re still a traitor.” Later, she’d finish the song on her bedroom floor, rushing to get it done in 20 minutes before dinner with a friend. “I think maybe in hindsight [that] made me write a better song,” she says, “because I wasn’t in my head thinking too much about is this word perfect? Is this thing perfect?” Her eyes are warm and excited as she imagines what’s next. Maybe Nashville, to write with country music greats and learn from them. Maybe more rock music collaborators, the way Halsey tapped Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Jack White is her hero, but maybe she’d be too scared if he reached out to work together, not quite ready yet. Maybe more acting, though she doesn’t want to be “pigeonholed” into only doing one thing. She’s going to try not to rush into her next album: “I’m gonna take my time to figure out exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it.” Songwriting, Olivia says, is a way to talk about what isn’t socially acceptable, unraveling in a way she wouldn’t do in person. There’s the Olivia who sits across the table from me, carefully balancing avocado toast, awe at her good fortune, pride in what she’s created, gratitude toward the musicians who inspired her, and humility for what she has yet to learn. There’s the Olivia who asks multiple times during our conversation if she’s giving a good answer. Then there’s the Olivia who wrote, “Good for you, you're doing great out there without me, baby! Like a damn sociopath!” If there’s a limit to a pop star’s agency, to a young woman’s power even in 2021 when teenage girls dominate everything — it’s perhaps not something you can fully grasp at 18. Who knows how we’ll discuss Olivia Rodrigo in 10 years? Who knows how she’ll look back on this chaotic, exciting debut year? For now, she’s focused on staying grounded in reality, and seeing the lessons she’s learned so far as only making her stronger than she was yesterday. She has so much room to grow and build and write. The noise is somewhat out of her control, though maybe one day it won’t be. Even when things about her life or public presence get messy, she’s still so grateful she gets to write songs. Like, this is her job. How cool. How lucky she is to get to do this for a living. It makes all the difficult things easier to put into perspective. It focuses the noise and turns it into music.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 7, 2021 14:56:09 GMT
Olivia Rodrigo RESPONDS To 'Sour' Songwriting Backlash!
In a new interview, Olivia Rodrigo has addressed the criticism about the originality of her debut album Sour after she retroactively added songwriting credits to some of her hit songs.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 7, 2021 21:23:02 GMT
Olivia Rodrigo may be a superstar, but she's still only a teenager — and she wants people to remember that. In the October cover story interview for Teen Vogue, Rodrigo, 18, opened up about the expectations that come with being a pop star sensation at such a young age — and said it's a "terrifying thought." "When you're in the industry, you're sort of treated like a child but expected to act like an adult. That's a really terrifying thought, to think that I'm not allowed to make any mistakes, because I think that's how you grow as a person," the "Brutal" singer told the outlet. She continued, "I'm no different from any other 18-year-old out there. I'm definitely going to make a lot of mistakes in my life and in my career probably too. That's just life." On the topic of growing up, Rodrigo also touched on the impacts social media has on young girls — and explained why she finds it "frustrating." "It's so frustrating to see young girls held to a completely different standard than other people. Social media is making it even harder for young girls to grow up," Rodrigo said. "I don't even think it's about me being like, 'Oh, I'm hurt to see people say mean things about me or my friends,'" she continued. "It's really toxic for young girls to open their Snapchat app and see the articles about young women who are just sharing their art and existing in the world, and watching them being torn apart for doing absolutely nothing."
|
|