In just a short time, Olivia Rodrigo has ascended to global stardom. With two critically acclaimed, Grammy-nominated albums under her belt, she’s broken records and embarked on a world tour. Recently, Rodrigo shared a photo on her Instagram story from a bridge in Singapore, prepping for her concert. Despite her rapid rise to fame, Rodrigo stays grounded, often reflecting on her inspirations and personal growth. As she navigates life in the spotlight, she continues to evolve both personally and artistically. Her music, layered with emotion and honesty, resonates deeply with fans around the world, capturing the complexity of growing up. Here’s a look at some of her thoughts and habits that help guide her success.
In an interview with Deadline, Rodrigo shared who her inspirations are. “I love listening to like OG singer-songwriters. I find that that’s an endless well of inspiration. I was listening to a lot of Simon and Garfunkel while making Guts and this Hunger Games song. I listened to a lot of Carole King and Joni Mitchell and people like that I feel like always move me.”
Rodrigo tells The New Yorker that she felt less pressure making her second album after her first had so much success. “It happened so young in my career. I had this album that was out, and I won Grammys, and I was nineteen, and I was, like, Wow, I’ve done so much that I wanted to do. I’m only nineteen. But, in a way, that’s also sort of freeing. Maybe that sounds weird, but it’s so nice to have accomplished those things in the last album cycle. I’m so grateful for everything that happened then, and all of the doors that that’s opened. But, in a way, it’s kind of nice also to think, Now I just get to make music for me. You know what I mean? I feel like I can get away with doing anything now.”
Rodrigo tells The New Yorker that her songs are a lot like her, layered. “I think that I am very multifaceted as a person, and some days I feel like I want to be super sarcastic and satirical and I feel angry and pissed. And, other times, I’m feeling really sentimental and want to write a guitar ballad. I think that it’s fun to play with different aspects of your personality, but I always try to make it seem genuine and true to who I am on a soul level, too.“
Rodrigo opened up about how she feels she’s changed to The New Yorker. “I’ve changed so much just between the ages of seventeen and twenty. In that time period, you grow. I feel like I grew twenty-five years in three years. So, yeah, she’s vastly different. But I definitely remember the fear of sitting down and trying to write this second album, and thinking, Oh, my God, I’m not a seventeen-year-old girl going through her first heartbreak anymore. That’s such a universally relatable experience. How am I going to make something that people can get behind?”
Rodrigo revealed to The New Yorker that she wanted to take a poetry class to help with her writing. “There’s a song on the album called ‘Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl’—it’s about me dealing with the consequences of that. I was homeschooled my whole life, and I always wanted to go to college. I was always very curious. There’s so much that I want to know in this world. I really enjoyed taking that class. I’ve always been super interested in poetry, and I’ve been writing it for a long time. It was really informative, and I feel very grateful that I got that opportunity. We actually turned one of the poems that I wrote as an assignment in the poetry class into a song on the album, called ‘Lacy.'”