Olivia Rodrigo burst onto the pop charts with her hit single “Drivers Licence”, but has no patience for “BS” complaints that her songs focus on teenage angst.
“I try not to look at it or take that stuff super seriously,” the 18-year-old says in an interview with The Guardian.
However, she admitted she had picked up on the “sexist criticism of songwriters like me being told that they only write songs about boys.”
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Pointing out she’d seen similar criticism levelled at her songwriting idol Taylor Swift — “which is just BS in my mind” — she said the argument being made didn’t make sense to her.
“I’m a teenage girl, I write about stuff that I feel really intensely — and I feel heartbreak and longing really intensely — and I think that’s authentic and natural,” she explained.
“I don’t really understand what people want me to write about; do you want me to write a song about income taxes?” she added. “How am I going to write an emotional song about that?”
With the understanding that teenagers feel their emotions so “intensely,” Rodrigo said she wanted to expand the repertoire of emotions beyond what are typically written about in pop songs.
“Something I’m really proud of is that this record talks about emotions that are hard to talk about or aren’t really socially acceptable especially for girls: anger, jealousy, spite, sadness, they’re frowned-upon as b***hy and moaning and complaining or whatever,” she explained. “But I think they’re such valid emotions.”
