Olivia Rodrigo

knows what
makes her happy
now

Olivia wears black and ivory crepe couture dress VALENTINO

and earrings and necklaces SWAROVSKI

She's the best pop star on the

planet: a rage-soundtracking,
youth-code cracking, confidence-
power packing backdrop to a
million teenage lives. And jaw-
droppingly, brilliantly, excitingly,
the 20-year-old is just getting
started.
MUSIC
Words: Jade Wickes
Photography: Jim Goldberg
Styling: Danny Reed and Danielle
Emerson
21st November 2023

Taken from the new print issue of THE FACE.

Shop the three limited edition Olivia Rodrigo
covers here.

The last time I saw Olivia Rodrigo was at

a London dinner she hosted with THE FACE.
Dressed in a blood-red halterneck dress and
chatting genially to all guests, there was no hint
of the megawatt fame that comes from being
one of the world’s biggest pop stars.

She partied at Chiltern Firehouse until 4am that

night, following a visit to Lucky Voice, one of the
city’s best and most appropriately garish
karaoke establishments. Her songs of choice:
Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and Before He
Cheats by Carrie Underwood.

Didn’t fancy singing any of her own, then?

“Absolutely not,” she says, slightly horrified, in

the more familiar surroundings of her favourite
West Hollywood coffee shop. “If I even saw
someone doing karaoke to one of my songs [in
front of me], I’d curl up into a ball and die.”

Prior to all of this, in April 2021, during her first

FACE interview, Olivia told me that “being
angry, jealous, overly emotional or sad can often
be framed as being bitchy or moany”. At the
time, her world was only just beginning to tilt on
its axis. In January she’d released drivers
license, the soaring ballad that accrued
a previously unheard of 17 million Spotify
streams in a single day – a number that has now
hit more than 1.95 billion. “I decided to shine
a light on those feelings, even though that was
uncomfortable to talk about.”

The discomfort paid off. Her debut album Sour

went on to be streamed nearly 11 billion times;
Olivia toured it around the world and won three
Grammys (Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal
Album and Best Pop Solo Performance). Then,
two years later, it was time for her to do it all
again.

Olivia wears black and ivory crepe couture dress VALENTINO

and earrings and necklaces SWAROVSKI

Enter: her rollicking follow-up album Guts,

released in September. Of equally epic
proportions as Sour, its distinctly alt-rock sound
is bolstered by the simmering rage and
frustration inherent to being a teenage girl.
Where Sour functioned as a conduit through
which to bask in the soul-crushing anguish of
heartbreak, Guts is all about the potency of
healing from it.

Debuting at number one in 14 countries, it’s

a project that’s cemented Olivia as a prophet for
her generation’s malaise, a songwriter who’s
nailed the tyranny of turning 20, the age she is
now, with startling clarity.

“It’s so strange. I’m so happy and calm after

putting out Guts,” she says. “I thought I’d be
anxious, checking what people are saying, how
it’s doing. But to put something out is just so
cathartic and I feel really happy. Making the
record is the thing that’s in my control.
Everything else isn’t, so…”

This morning in Los Angeles, Olivia is sitting

across from me scraping vigorously at a bowl of
overnight oats, which are covered in maple
syrup and jam. She’s wearing no make-up,
a grey knitted turtleneck, black pleated skirt and
Dr. Martens Mary Janes. An array of silver rings
is wrapped around most of her fingers,
complemented by shiny black nail varnish. It’s
an optimistically autumnal outfit, given it’s
almost 30 degrees outside (“you guys, I’m
dying!”).

Today has been filled with wholesome activities

– Olivia spent the morning “on my fitness grind”
at the gym with her trainer. Right now, this is
a welcome pause in her schedule. She’s
approached the massive global interest in Guts
with ease and curiosity; several times
throughout our interview, she turns questions
back to me with genuine interest. (Perhaps she
caught the bug while interviewing Jenna Ortega
for the Wednesday star’s winter 2022 FACE
cover story: “Coming up with questions is so
much harder than answering them,” says Olivia,
wide-eyed. “All power to you.”)

And while Olivia has been lauded across the

board as a voice of her generation, she’s acutely
aware that her experience of the world is only
just beginning. Even if the last 20 months have
passed at hyperspeed.

Olivia wears necklaces, bracelets and ring SWAROVSKI

Post-Sour, it was clear she’d established herself

as much more than a viral sensation. Olivia was
invited to the White House by President Joe
Biden in July 2021 as part of a campaign to
encourage young people to get vaccinated.
A quick year later, last summer, she performed
at Glastonbury. Packing out the festival’s Other
Stage, I watched her invite Lily Allen on stage
for a duet, dedicating the singer’s 2009 song
Fuck You to the US Supreme Court – and calling
out the offending judges, one by one, by name –
following the overturning of Roe v. Wade the
day before.

If all of this feels far removed from the average

young person’s day-to-day life, well, that’s
because it is. But Olivia exhibits a refreshing
lack of hubris about the whole thing, insisting
the success of her musical career is simply
a byproduct of the pleasure she derives from
songwriting. She was well aware that she had
big shoes to fill with Guts. But at least they were
her own.

“I feel myself growing and understanding so

much,” she says. “Albums are such a marker of
where you’re at in your life. They’re like little time
capsules and it’s so interesting to look back on
when I was 17 writing Sour versus 19 writing
Guts. I have more confidence, I’m more self-
assured. I know who I am and what I want a little
more. It seems that I get a little happier every
year.”

This sentiment is echoed by Olivia’s good friend

Joe Locke, star of Netflix’s queer coming-of-age
series Heartstopper, who accompanied her on
that karaoke trip a few months back. The pair hit
it off at the tail end of the Sour tour in July 2022,
celebrating its success in London over chips
and vanilla milkshakes at the Leicester Square
McDonald’s.

“Olivia has the wisdom of a person who’s lived

seven lifetimes, with the energy of someone just
entering adulthood,” he tells me. “Guts is the
perfect next album – her songwriting has
somehow gotten better, more clever, more
mature. She’s insanely amazing, and too humble
for her own good.”

Olivia wears necklaces and bracelets SWAROVSKI

Sure enough, the new album, Guts, sees Olivia

treading more varied sonic and thematic
territory. It’s peppered with a conveyor belt filled
with both mainstream and esoteric influences:
from Bikini Kill to No Doubt, Carole King to
Veruca Salt and the Beastie Boys.

“I think I only figured out the rock side of my

voice towards the end of Sour,” she says, “so
I wanted to explore that more. And I just mostly
love listening to songs written by women –
there’s something special and poignant about
them that I gravitate towards. I love how Gwen
Stefani can write a rock-ska song about feeling
jealous and insecure that, like, her boyfriend is
talking to other people. It’s so cool.”

This kind of balancing act is one that Olivia

channels throughout Guts. On all-american
bitch, one of her favourite songs and the album’s
opener, she talks about the paradoxical
pressures thrust upon young women. She wrote
it on pen and paper, unafraid to rip things up and
start anew. The song, fittingly, throbs with
angst.

Meanwhile, the album’s second single bad idea

right? touches on the twisted pleasure of going
back to a toxic ex, just one last time; logical
deals with the irrationality of love; and teenage
dream laments the pitfalls of precociousness.
At its heart, Guts luxuriates in making bad
decisions, burning the candle at both ends and
embracing a reckless, hedonistic lack of self-
control.

“I played all the songs for my mom. She’s very

important and I have to get her approval on
everything,” says Olivia. When she played her
the grudge, though, a melancholy track about
struggling to find forgiveness in the midst of
a particularly acrimonious break-up, something
felt different.

“When we made it I was like, whatever –

I thought it could be a bonus track. Then when
my mom heard it, she was so moved that she
bawled her eyes out, and she doesn’t get that
way with everything. She definitely has her
criticisms, but watching her reaction to it made
me see the song in a new way. She’s the reason
it’s on the album.”

Then there’s vampire. The album’s lead single,

a track dripping with high drama and righteous
anger at a deceitful ex-lover, also came with its
share of doubts.

“I remember playing the song to a lot of my

friends and they were like: ‘“Fame fucker?”
Should you really say that?’ And I got really in my
head about whether the song was going to be
relatable, whether it was about celebrity in
a way that was inaccessible. It almost made me
not want to put it out as a first single, but I stuck
with my gut.”

Inset: Olivia wears earrings and necklaces SWAROVSKI;

black crepe couture dress with silver floral detail VALENTINO
and necklaces SWAROVSKI

Olivia wears necklaces SWAROVSKI

Even if Olivia’s celebrity isn’t particularly

relatable, being drained – emotionally, mentally,
socially – by a guy is clearly a universal
experience. And that monumental line,
“Bloodsucker, fame fucker /Bleedin’ me dry, like
a goddamn vampire”, is such a subversive,
theatrical dig that relatability becomes moot.
The most challenging part of putting together
vampire, for Olivia and her longtime
producer/co-writer Dan Nigro, with whom she
has closely collaborated on both of her albums,
was coming up with a clean version.

“It was the last thing we did before turning the

album in,” she says. “For a whole day, me and
Dan tried to make it work. We came up with
a few other options for fun, like ‘whale blubber’,
‘bad lover’, ‘garlic butter’. Bad ones.” In the end,
“dream crusher” won out. Probably for the best.

One of the album’s greatest throughlines, and

a cornerstone of the teenage female
experience, is shame. The embarrassment that’s
part and parcel of loving, friendship, social
media, even getting dressed in the morning.
This wasn’t necessarily intentional. Olivia didn’t
even pick up on it herself until she listened to
the album all the way through.

“I think it’s a normal thing that people

experience in their adolescence. It’s something
I was working through and I think there’s
something beautiful about feeling shame. On
songs like love is embarrassing or pretty isn’t
pretty, which are about insecurity, not fitting in,
not knowing how to act, there’s something so
powerful about claiming ownership [over
shame]. There’s a lot of working through
teenage awkwardness on Guts.”

Social media, unsurprisingly, is a source of

anxiety for Olivia, who quadruple-checks all her
Instagram posts before sharing them with her
35 million followers, staring at her selfies until
she’s convinced her face looks weird. Does she
have a finsta?

“I do,” she says, a little shyly. “But nothing’s on it.

I just use it to stalk my crushes. I’m sooo good at
finding stuff out about people on social media.”
Olivia’s completely animated now, letting out an
excited “oooh” as she leans in, as though
sharing a bit of gossip. “It’s one of my favourite
pastimes.”

Growing up in Temecula, around 85 miles

southeast of LA, she was a homeschooled only
child whose interest in acting saw her making
a TV debut at 12. She got her big break only
a year later in Disney’s comedy series
Bizaardvark , starring alongside Madison Hu,
who’s still her best friend. Then, in 2019, came
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,
a meta reinterpretation of the classic 2006
musical movie, in which Olivia was cast in the
lead role of Nini.

After being given the opportunity to write some

of her own songs on the show, doing so for
herself, outside the realm of television, felt
attainable.

“Speaking of shame,” she continues, “I love

writing about all these vulnerable things. It’s my
favourite thing to do, and I’ve never had a hard
time doing it, because no one ever made me feel
ashamed for showing my feelings. Being such
a young actor, I was always encouraged to be
hyper-emotional and expressive. My parents
were always great about that, which meant
I was able to write emotionally, without ever
being afraid to explore those parts of myself.”

Still, for all the benefits Olivia has reaped from

her time spent acting – professionalism, work
ethic, getting a decent handle on being in the
public eye – being a teenager hanging out with
40-year-old guys while shooting TV shows took
its toll. “I talk about that in therapy,” she says,
before quickly changing the subject and
imparting an anecdote that reflects more
positively on her High School Musical
experience.

“When we were filming one day, after drivers

license came out, one of the grips, who I’d seen
around but never really talked to, came up to me
and was like: ‘It brings me back to my first
heartbreak, Olivia, and you have no idea how
special it is that I get to relive that because of
you.’ It was so touching and I got closer to him
because of that.”

Another, not quite as heartwarming but no less

revelatory interaction: someone accosting Olivia
in the street to tell her they’d had sex to Sour.
“Guts, I’d be like, hmm, OK,” she says, laughing
hard. “But Sour is sad as fuck. It must’ve been
really slow, depressing sex with fucking traitor
blasting in the background.”

Now, Olivia splits her time between LA and New

York, having recently bought an apartment in
Greenwich Village. She’s not too far from
Madison Hu, who’s currently studying in the city
at Columbia University. Hu, unsurprisingly,
speaks highly of Olivia, the close friend who’s
kept her integrity intact regardless of how many
streaming records she breaks. “The respect and
admiration we have for each other is something
I feel so lucky to be able to experience,” she tells
me. “Our friendship has taught me how to
approach almost every other relationship I have
and have had in my life.”

Olivia wears jumper OFFWWHITE and rings SWAROVSKI

Guts track logical was inspired by

a conversation Hu and Olivia had over the
phone. “I was talking about how love isn’t
logical, and she paused me to write a sentence
down,” Hu continues. “I’m very glad she did.”

Olivia enjoys city life in New York, but most of

her friends and family are in LA, where she
spends the bulk of her time. She’s a big cinema-
goer, often slipping unnoticed into the crowd
with a cap pulled down over her face before
kicking back with some popcorn.

“I also watched The Bling Ring for the first time

the other day. Sofia Coppola is so awesome,”
she says excitedly, almost levitating off her chair
at a mention of Netflix’s Beckham documentary.
“Oh my god!” she gasps, “I am ob-sessed.
I couldn’t care less about football, I’ve never
watched it, but I need a 10-part series. I was on
the edge of my seat the whole time. His ’90s
haircut! So cute.

“And it’s about a real love story, too. I want

someone to love me like that. And I want to read
Victoria Beckham’s autobiography. God, I’m
such a gossip. Gossip brings me joy – in
moderation.”

Daydreaming about the future brings Olivia joy,

too. Sometimes, she pays a visit to her psychic
with hopes of gleaning even a tiny morsel of
what it might hold. “I take it all with a grain of
salt,” she acknowledges, “but I really love going
to psychics. I hope my one is wrong, though,
because she says that I’m not going to find
a boyfriend until March. March! We’ll see. I’m
just going to do me until then.”

In a few days, Olivia will be heading back to

London, the city that she’s travelled to most
outside the US, to hang out with friends. I warn
her that the weather over here has been a little
soggy this autumn. That’s no bother: “I can get
my little trench coat out! I’m so excited.”

This will be a well-deserved break, given that in

February Olivia embarks on a tour around
Europe and North America: 75 dates, 54 cities,
15 countries. The support acts speak to the
range of her age- and genre-defying appeal.
There’s ’90s alt-rock legends The Breeders,
FACE cover star PinkPantheress, day-glo
singer-songwriter Remi Wolf and Olivia’s friend
Chappell Roan, whose new album, The Rise and
Fall of a Midwest Princess, she reckons, is “one
of the best pop albums this year”.

“I wrote Guts with the tour in mind,” she says

about the run of arena shows, on which she’ll be
accompanied by the four-piece all-women rock
band she performed with last time. “When
I wrote Sour, I’d never played a show before, so
it was an educational experience that I applied
to the songwriting process [with Guts]. I’m
really stoked to play bigger venues, to go places
I’ve never been before. It’s going to be a totally
different ballgame.”

Ultimately, for Olivia, this second-album cycle

has been an exercise in self-fulfilment and
introspection. Of fucking up and living to tell the
tale. No one’s ever good at being 20, of course,
far less writing an album about it. But Olivia
Rodrigo might have come closer than anyone.

“It’s a normal part of growing up, making all

these mistakes and indulging in things that you
shouldn’t, getting with people who’re so wrong
for you,” she concludes.

“I used to have a lot of regret about the period of

my life I wrote Guts about. But looking back, it
was so necessary. I needed to get it out of my
system. I know what makes me happy and
content now. I know a lot more about myself
than I think.”

Olivia wears necklaces SWAROVSKI

CREDITS

HAIR Clayton Hawkins at A Frame MAKEEUP

Melissa Hernandez at The Wall Group
MANICURIST Yoko Sakakura at A Frame PROP
STYLIST James Rene PRODUCTION DoBeDo
Represents LOCAL PRODUCTION Connect
The Dots PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS
Ruby Goldberg and Keith Kleiner DIGI TECH
A.J. Wilson STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS Hollie
Williamson and Emilia Fishburn PRODUCTION
ASSISTANTS Juan Calvo, Mark Cheche and
Mateo Calvo

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