Olivia Rodrigo’s highly anticipated sophomore album, GUTS, has officially arrived, and she stopped by the Hard Rock Hotel New York for an Audacy Check In with Mike Adam to talk to us all about it.
LISTEN NOW: Audacy Check In with Olivia Rodrigo
To follow up her GRAMMY-winning debut, SOUR, the Pop artist and newly part-time New Yorker leaned more into some Rock vibes for her second offering, GUTS, an intentional move on her part.
“I think we kinda discovered the more rockier part of my sound in like the later days of writing SOUR,” Olivia noted. Listing off “good 4 u” and “brutal” as songs that came together in “the final hours” of that album.
“Having discovered that,” she continued, “I really loved that aspect of my sound, and so I think we felt kinda a little more freedom to explore it in this album, and I’m really happy it turned out that way. And I also just think songs like that are so fun to play live, and like scream and jump around to… So yeah that’s definitely what we set out to do.”
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While Rodrigo has no regrets about any of the tracks from her first album, there are certain things she can’t help but think she’d go back to adjust or change, sharing the one thing that she “can’t stand” the most on the song “traitor.”
“There’s one thing that bugs me so bad, in ‘traitor,’ I go, ‘I fell in love,’ and I say, ‘wit you,’ instead of with you. I don’t know why but every time I listen to it, it drives me crazy. ’Why did you think you were being cool? Just pronounce the word right!’”
Also on her mind, is a particular line of lyrics she’s been wanting to use for a while, that’s currently “in a song that may or may not come out.”
“It’s ‘how could I ever trade something that’s good for what’s right.’ And I don’t know why I just love that line and I was trying to fit into a song for a while," she shared. "So maybe it’ll see that light of day.”
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Splitting her time between LA and New York to write this album, Olivia revealed that “it was really nice to kinda switch up the environment and tap into new energy and be amongst new people. I think that shaking it up really helped us a lot.”
For all that and more, including Mike helping Olivia realize she should totally dress up as a vampire for Halloween, check out the full interview above.