Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Drop Dead’ Is a Heavenly Fakeout

As an professional chronicler of youthful heartbreak, Olivia Rodrigo’s fame precedes her. She broke out in 2021 with the pop-operatic sensation “Drivers License,” went scorched earth later that spring with the spiky rocker “Good 4 U” and returned to her sustained musical undertaking of taking exes to job in 2023 with the sharp-fanged kiss-off “Vampire.”

Earlier this month, when the 23-year-old Rodrigo introduced the primary single off her upcoming third album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” she appeared to vow acquainted emotional carnage in its very title: “Drop Dead.” But now that the music is right here, it is clear that it was a fakeout. “Drop Dead” is essentially the most visceral evocation of dreamy romance that Rodrigo has launched but, and its title just isn’t a barb a lot as a confession of crush-struck melodrama: “The most alive I’ve ever been,” Rodrigo sings on the climax of the heart-racing refrain, “but kiss me and I might drop dead.”

In a crowded pack of younger feminine pop stars vying to be Gen Z’s answer to Britney Spears or Taylor Swift, Rodrigo has set herself aside by claiming a non secular kinship with the choice rock of the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s. Her 2023 album, “Guts,” channeled Veruca Salt and Bikini Kill, and she or he invited the Breeders to open some dates on her accompanying tour.

On “Drop Dead,” Rodrigo makes his retro-rock bona fides clear from the bounce, referencing a 1987 hit by the Cure within the opening verse: “You know all the words to ‘Just Like Heaven,’” she murmurs, “and I know why he wrote them now that you’re standing right here.”

Even as she tries to current herself because the cool-girl-next-door, although, the road accommodates a profitable reference to her personal superstardom: Rodrigo truly does know why Robert Smith he wrote “Just Like Heaven,” as a result of the 2 carried out the music collectively throughout their headlining set at Glastonbury final 12 months. (In a latest British Vogue profile of Rodrigo, Smith, 66, wrote in a assertion that he owned each of her albums, and that whereas he knew her songs had been “not really ‘aimed at my demographic’ (!), they are all so good that it is hard not to fall in love with them.”)

In the charming video for “Drop Dead,” directed by the photographer Petra CollinsRodrigo treats the ornately cavernous Palace of Versailles prefer it was her bed room, speeding by its gilded halls with wired headphones on, lip-syncing alongside to her personal music in a non-public reverie. The setting and the defiantly girlish aesthetic pay homage to “Marie Antoinette”-era Sofia Coppola, however the music’s starry-eyed synths and syllable-stuffed verses additionally subtly recall “A-Lister,” a minor viral hit launched final 12 months by Coppola’s daughter Romy Mars when she was 18. (Given the truth that Sabrina Carpenter launched a video inspired by “The Bling Ring” Earlier this month, I’m declaring the Gen-Z-pop-star Sofiassance formally upon us.)

Rodrigo has established herself as such a distinctive expertise that even the smallest concessions she makes to sound like anyone else can really feel particularly sovereign. It’s notable that she wrote “Drop Dead” with contributions from modern pop’s most booked-and-busy songwriter, Amy Allenwho in simply the final 12 months has had a hand in hits by Olivia Dean, Tate McRae and Carpenter. (Allen additionally had a credit score on one music on “Guts,” the album observe “Pretty Isn’t Pretty.”)

And even after the controversy that ensued from Swift belatedly receiving writing credit on Rodrigo’s 2021 hit “Deja Vu,” an unmistakable echo of her chirpy cadences could be heard all through “Drop Dead.” But Rodrigo is finally in a position to transcend these extra earthly considerations together with his sheer dedication to the heavenly feeling that the music conjures — the woozy hope and antic flights of fancy which are born out of contemporary infatuation.

“I realized all my favorite romantic love songs were beautiful because they had a tinge of fear or longing for them,” Rodrigo advised British Vogue, explaining his inspiration for the brand new album. Perhaps the trick she picked up from “Just Like Heaven” was determining how one can pack the emotional wallop of a breakup anthem into a love music.