Olivia Rodrigo Comments on the Writing of “Guts”

Olivia Rodrigo has had quite the year as the follow-up to her debut album titled “Guts” has dominated the charts just like its predecessor. While it may look like the album was a walk in the park Rodrigo claims that the whole process tested her “confidence and patience” in a new article from NME which references an interview the singer gave to Variety.


Rodrigo claims “It taught me some important lessons about songwriting in terms of focusing on your craft rather than just waiting for inspiration to strike. It taught me about the mindset that is most conducive to writing: You can never sit down at the piano and try to write something that everyone will like; that always results in a really bad song. It taught me that I write songs that I want to hear.” The singer in the interview also dives into the writing of her newly released single‘Can’t Catch Me Now’” and claims that to write that song she felt that she had to watch the movie first to “write something from the perspective of a character in a movie”  because she is “very direct in her songwriting” and mainly writes about what goes on in her life.

Whatever the singer is doing must be working as her sophomore album released in September scored a five-star review from NME with the publication declaring “‘Guts’ doesn’t just feel transitional in a musical sense. It marks the end of Rodrigo’s teenage years” and that she “she offers blunt self-analysis while reflecting on wider cultural ideas of performance and swallowing anger to comply with the wants and needs of others. It works as a display of real power, range, and versatility – all of which Rodrigo possesses in abundance.”. As for what’s next she tells Variety she tries “to write one song every day” and adds that “If I don’t do it, I get depressed. I’m just writing songs to process what’s going on, whether in my personal life or in my perception of the world.”. 

Ryan Freund: I am a recent graduate from University of Iowa with a degree in Communications and minor in News Literacy. I have experience in events and love pop culture!
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