Olivia Rodrigo might not be the artist she is today if it weren’t for Lorde.
“I remember getting my first phone — I was probably 12 or 13 — and the first thing I did was download Lorde’s Pure Heroine,” Rodrigo, 20, said during a Monday, January 1, interview for The Hollywood Reporter’s “Off Script” series. “I love that record so much, and I remember listening to it as I first started writing songs and just being blown away by her lyrics that are just about being a teenager living in the suburbs.”
Lorde’s 2013 debut — released when she was only 16 — established the now 27-year-old New Zealand singer as a superstar thanks to the success of “Royals,” “Team” and “Tennis Court.” Rodrigo said she felt like the record was written specifically for her. “I just remember never hearing my life be put into a song like that, where it just made being young and doing these seemingly unimportant things feel so sacred,” Rodrigo recalled. “That album is one of my favorites, and she still inspires me a lot to this day.”
“I remember hearing [“Royals”] on the radio at the time,” Rodrigo continued. “It was one of those ‘pinch me’ moments where you always remember, snapshot memory, like, ‘Oh, my God, what is this?’ Changes the trajectory of your life.”
Later in the roundtable, Cynthia Erivo said her first album was Brandy’s Never Say Never, noting, “I was obsessed with it.” Dua Lipa said hers was either Alicia Keys’ Songs in A Minor or Nelly Furtado’s Whoa Nelly. Jon Batiste said he bought four records as a youth: Michael Jackson’s Bad, Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun, D’Angelo’s Voodoo and Björk’s Vespertine. Julia Michaels said Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill was as impactful to her as Pure Heroine was to Rodrigo, while Billie Eilish said the first song she bought was AWOLNATION’s “Sail.” The first album she listened to in full was Green Day’s American Idiot.
Lorde’s most recent album was 2021’s Solar Power. In December 2023, she hinted that a follow-up was on its way by posting a pair of Instagram photos where she was “listening to myself” while lounging around in pajamas.
The update came a month after she was riding the New York City subway and ran into a fan who subsequently shared their interaction via social media. A Lorde fan page picked up the photo and claimed that she was “testing her own album,” a factoid that Lorde confirmed. “I was, in fact, listening to myself,” she commented.
If Lorde releases her fourth studio album in the coming months, it would be one of many potential highlights of the year for Rodrigo. The singer is currently nominated for six awards at the 2024 Grammys, including Record of the Year (“Vampire”), Album of the Year (Guts) and Song of the Year (“Vampire”). Rodrigo’s “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” will also compete for Best Rock Song, going up against The Rolling Stones (“Angry”), Queens of the Stone Age (“Emotion Sickness”), Boygenius (“Not Strong Enough”) and Foo Fighters (“Rescued”).
