Ever since Olivia Rodrigo began teasing “drop dead,” the lead single off you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, fans have been spiraling over what (or, more specifically, who) may have inspired the hit. Several of the lyrics seem to point to Louis Partridge (beer! Versailles! Gemini!), but during a vision-boarding session with Cosmo editor-in-chief Willa Bennett (which you can watch right this way!), Liv finally revealed exactly what inspired the sweet love song. According to her, she wrote “drop dead” after a really great first date.
“I just wanted to capture that first interaction you have with someone, like, This could be the best thing ever; I’m going to tell all my friends,” she recalled. “It reminds me of running around a city, feeling young and free. I felt that a lot while writing the album.”
A few weeks earlier during her cover story interview with Cosmo, Liv revealed what it was like to “write about joy, love, and passion” on her latest album, which was quite the switch-up for her, considering the majority of her “big songs are about being sad, angry, heartbroken.”
As she explained it, “With this album, I actually was like, ‘I’m done with the sophomore one. Now I can have fun again.’ I was writing songs the way I did when I was 16, purely for fun. There were some beautiful moments, like, ‘Whoa, it’s flowing out,’ which feels like catching a butterfly in a net.”
And while she noted that “it’s cringier to be happy,” she found it freeing to write about happiness for a change. Oh and for the record? Olivia doesn’t really care if you’re into this new era of hers or not.
Quoting the Camp Rock classic “This Is Me,” Liv said, “Even if my album flops and nobody likes it, if I feel like this is real, this is me, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, then it’ll feel like success.”
