A biography for Olivia Rodrigohasn’t been written yet.
“I'm a super specific songwriter. I always have been. I think the most impactful songs are specific. Broad storytelling just isn't fun in any art medium.”
“I grew up feeling inspired by people like Carole King, who wrote songs for other people to start her career, and I always thought, 'What an admirable thing to do.'”
“I listen to music as if it's spoken-word poetry. I'm a lyric-driven songwriter, so it's been a learning process to focus on other things. Collaborating really broadens my horizons to other important things about music.”
“I came up with the lyrics and the melody for 'good 4 u' one morning in the shower.”
“I feel like if a girl writes a song about heartbreak, very often people start criticizing her for feeling those emotions, and only writing about that. I do just love a heartbreak song.”
“I love living alone.”
“It's hard for anyone to grow up in this media where it feels like if you don't have European features and blonde hair and blue eyes, you're not traditionally pretty.”
“If you had every color and palette and any size canvas you'd want, it'd kind of feel overwhelming and you wouldn't make anything particularly inspiring. But I think by restricting yourself, you can kind of force your brain to work in different ways and have a really fun time doing it.”
“A song is so not good if I can tell it's coming from a disingenuous place. It's like a little lie-detector test, a polygraph.”
“I feel like when you're making the album, you can't really see the forest through the trees a little bit about what's about or what you're trying to get across.”
“I think there's a lot of vampire lore to be played with like 'You only come out at night' and stuff like that. There's a lot of fun songwriting fodder in there.”
“I think auditions are really rough for anyone. I know people who've gone into their first audition and booked it, but that definitely was not my experience.”
“I just love writing songs.”
“I always thought of myself as a singer/songwriter who fell into acting and really liked it, rather than a child actor who's like, 'Oh, I'm going to try to be a pop star now.'”
“I've definitely seen corporate dollars be prioritized over people's mental health. That's always been something that I've been really conscious of in my own career, and I'm really lucky I'm surrounded by people who are conscious of that and conscious of my mental health being the most important thing.”
“I literally wrote breakup songs before I ever held a boy's hand.”
“My favorite songs to sing are the really angry ones, especially on tour.”
“You definitely have to be a businesswoman to be a musician.”
“I'm just writing songs to process what's going on, whether in my personal life or in my perception of the world.”
“It's sort of funny to have songs get big about like, how much you feel like nobody likes you. It's sort of ironic and weird.”