Captions are auto-generated. Was that it? Wait, play that. That was our place I found it first I made the jokes, you tell to her when she's with you. Do you get deja vu. Earlier this year, Olivia Rodrigo released her first single driver's license, it became the first smash hit of twenty twenty one breaking records and topping the charts for over two months. She has now released her second single, Deja Vu, previewing her highly anticipated debut album, which she recorded while filming the second season of her Disney plus series, High School Musical, The Musical, the series in Salt Lake City. I'm Britney Spanos, senior writer for Rolling Stone. I sat down with Olivia and her producer, Dan Nigro, to talk about the songwriting and production process for Deja Vu. So, Dan, I wrote the song together and like the end of August 2020, I think we're actually trying to write another sadder song. And it wasn't working. And so Dan was like, well, what other ideas do you have in my notes app on my phone, I have like all of these like, you know, poems and like just like weird song concepts. And one of the, like, little hook lines that I had was when she's with you do get deja vu. I just think déjà vu is really cool. I get deja vu all the time and I think it's like a really interesting phenomenon. And so I thought it would be like a cool way to talk about deja vu, to talk about like when you break up with someone and they move on, sometimes you watch them on social media or whatever, and they're like living the same life that like you lived like with another partner. That can be sort of frustrating. And I feel like that's a really like universal, relatable thing that doesn't really get talked about a ton. And so I thought that would be a cool way to talk about deja vu and like, make it like fun and relationshipy. I'd say maybe like half or like seventy five percent of the songs that are on my project and that we make together I sort of will write like a verse and a chorus and Dan will help me finish it and polish it up. But deja vu, actually we wrote that like in a session together. Like I, I said, I wanted to write something with like when she's with you do get déjà vu and we sort of created that whole world together and wrote all the lyrics and the melodies together. I think Dan actually came up with the lyric. I think you came up with the Malibu thing. Did I. Yeah. You said Malibu and I was like, oh, I can see that. And Dan was like, what's your favorite ice cream? And I was like strawberry. And so we were like strawberry ice cream in Malibu. Strawberry ice cream in Malibu. Don't act like we didn't do all that too. That was the clean version. I think the line that I most recall was watching reruns of Glee. Yes, but I've never. I know it's like watching reruns of Glee. And Dan actually came up with the Billy Joel lyric too, which is probably my favorite lyric in the thing. Just trying to make Long Island represent as much as possible. Oddly enough, like I feel like the lyrics came so fast, I feel like what deja vu is like every idea that we came up with was actually kind of like, oh, yeah, let's just go with that. It was like, try not to overthink it. Yeah. I remember I did write a second verse, though. We wrote the verse in the chorus. Then I went home because it was like late and I wrote a second verse the next day that was like too serious. Because the fun thing about déjà vu is it's like kind of like funny and like tongue in cheek a little bit. And so I remember like me writing like a serious one and you were like, no, I think it's a constant theme sometimes. with Olivia is that it gets serious. I feel like that was drivers licenses was the same way, like the first bridge for driver's license was so emo. And like there's like I think we should make it more playful. Right. I'm very emo and Dan was in an emo band and he still tells me I'm emo, that's how you know, you're really emo. My favorite thing about working with Dan is if I write something that's bad, he's like, you can do better than that. We don't even entertain the idea. So it saves time. This song was definitely like the hardest song to make. For some reason, the production part was really difficult because also Olivia went to Salt Lake. So like the song wasn't actually finished being written, I think when she left. I prefer when Olivia is in the room because like she can tell me in real time if she likes, like, a sound or doesn't like a sound. There were a lot of moments where, like, we didn't have the right lyric or something and Olivia would like go in the car and I'd be like just sing this into your iPhone because it was so difficult with the pandemic to get into a recording studio. There was like so much of that going back and forth with the song. And I think it was also a little difficult for me because I'm very much like a singer songwriter, a ballad type girl. And this song is not like that at all. It's like a really cool mid tempo pop song. And so I think, like finding my footing in that genre of music took like a little bit of time and took a little bit of trial and error. Olivia and Dan shared some of the original recordings for the song and pointed out the intricate details and surprises on the track. And this was the original guitar that we wrote it to. This is really cool. I know I always like this one. I had the original version of the song, like the very first demo that I don't think anybody ever even heard this version except for me and maybe you. So this is the original idea. Care rides to Malibu strawberry ice cream, one spoon or two and trading jackets laughing 'bout how small it looks on you. What we ended up using was the Wurlitzer and like this toy piano mixed together, which is like the main sound and like I just wanted to feel somewhat like, I guess psychedelic. So we're like is going to feel like a little off-putting. I really love that. I love like how the verse is so serene almost. It's like, like, it's like painfully calm because the lyrics are so saccharin in the beginning purposefully to like let you into the chorus. What's clever about the song is that like the chorus is not what you, you just don't expect the lyrics to turn to what they turn into. So I think it's about that is like to kind of like engage the listener in a way that makes them feel like they don't actually know what they're about to get. When they say saying, I love you in between the chorus and the verse,. Do you want to give that away. Do you want to give it away. Yeah. Yeah. So only like like a couple of people like pick up on it. But I like whisper like I love you in the track and like it's like super buried and my A&R who's like listened to the song the poor guy, he's listen to a song like two hundred times because it went through so many mixes. He listen to it two hundred times and never heard it, which I think is super cool. So I don't know if it like only certain people can hear it, but it's like really buried and like very subtle. I love you. That was another Salt Lake City car recording. Oh, it was. Yeah. These guitars are iPhone recording guitars, which is fun. And then obviously the jazz vacuum. Dan refuses to call saxophones saxophones and insists we call them Jazz vacuums. And there's actually a lot of jazz vacuums on Olivia's recordings. So one of my favorite parts is I had an incredible musician named Ryan, do a lot of flutes and saxophone in the song, which I just think sound incredible, all these. I came into the studio one day and it was like, Dan, I hate deja vu, I don't like it, I don't want to put it out. The second verse is boring. And if I was listening to it I would just turn it off. I was like, so sad. And he's like, well, if like the second verse is boring, let's, like, make it more interesting. And so we, like, change the melody and we put some like I just like love like gang vocals. I love like yelling over the top of songs. And so we like added some of that. And then I feel like I like really raised the energy of the song. We tried so many things while you were still in Salt Lake and you were like, it's boring, the song is boring. So I like sped it up and then I speed it up a little bit more. And I was like, I don't think it's the speed of the song. And then I tried adding like other instrumentation and I was like, it started to sound weird. You just don't think like to change the song. You're like trying to change the production for so long. Like, how do we make this more interesting with the production? But ultimately at the end it was like, oh no, we just have to actually make the song better. That's a different song. No, it's not. This is different melody. We had a lot of different ideas for this thing. Yeah, this was this this is a worker and we we like worked on this one. Yeah. I don't think we ever actually knew and it was done. I think it just had to be done. That was like the label was like you have to turn it in by like today, like OK, we wanted to write a bridge. I think that was like the last part that we wrote. I wanted to be like really high energy because, you know, the rest of the song was like very like serene and like eerily calm. But I wanted like the last bridge to kind of, like, go crazy. And I love Cruel Summer, it's one of my favorite songs ever. I love that, like the lead vocals in it, like the harmonized yells that she does, I feel like they're like super electric and moving. And so I wanted to do something like that. And I love that um that little like that's like my favorite part of the production. That was a fight, that was a fight too. We wanted to do a post chorus like a vocal chorus. Well, yeah, I made the mistake of, like, print it because I got so excited about the song that I think I printed up a version for everyone to hear, like, check this out. And we didn't have a post chorus, so I just like took Olivia's vocal and like made a little vocal chop and I kind of liked it. I know that it was like felt like we were cheating by making a vocal chop. But like when the label heard it, everybody loved it. And Olivia was like, that's not going in the song. Like, I don't like vocal chops. This was the original original drop that happens. I was like, I know it's not my thing at all, I love, like synths and it's actually a synth in the thing. It kind of sounds like a cool, like warped guitar, which I like. It's a Mellotron. It's just like a super distorted Mellotron sound. I like, love that song. And it feels so like dirty and like raw. I'm happy we went there. I feel like I made the mistake of, like, making it early bands because I'm excited. Driver's license picked up steam much faster than Olivia ever could have imagined. I was curious how its immediate success affected the making of her second single. We chose this song to be to come out after driver's license probably in September, like we chose it a long time ago, before driver's license ever came out. I didn't have to choose the next single knowing that driver's license kind of was this huge success. So that definitely took a lot of the pressure off. But us and my team really didn't want to do the safe thing. And we put out another heartbreak ballad. I think, you know, people probably would resonate with that and they resonated with driver's license. But we really wanted to show that I'm a versatile songwriter and a versatile artist and I can write like heartbreak songs and I can also like make like cool like alternative pop songs and stuff like that. So I just didn't want to be like pigeonholed into like the like heartbreak ballad kind of girl thing. So, yeah, driver's license did give me a lot of confidence in that regard. It's really true. Like people really resonate with authenticity. You can have like this catchy melody and like greatest production ever. But truth and like vulnerability is really what people resonate with. And that's always going to stay the same no matter what genre of music you do, no matter if you do an up tempo song or down tempo song. And it's also just like cool. Like I just love writing songs. And like driver's license means that probably other people are going to like, listen to my other songs. Which is just such an added plus. So yeah, it's, it's really cool.
Whenever I first heard the song and she chanted, “I know you get deja vu” all I could hear was “he looks up grinning like a devil.” It’s definitely heavily influenced by Cruel Summer. With that being said, the song is good in its own right. You can tell by her lyrics that she’s influenced by Taylor, especially with the painting of the imagery in her songs that just scream Taylor Swift. I’m excited to see where she goes with her career and songwriting.
She gets a lot of hate but literally every artist is asked who their musical inspiration is and it must be unbelievable for her that she’s charting with the artist she’s been looking up to her entire life for inspiration and she can’t hide her enthusiasm but really who could it’s sweet
Love her!! I saw people gatekeeping and saying she's a fake swiftie because in her "cruel summer" cover she sang: "He looks so pretty like a devil" instead of the actual lyrics. But a lot of us thought this was the lyrics!
Thought this was an interesting video overall, but wanted to share her commentary on the Cruel summer inspiration. :)
wait.. i kinda like that original drop they had lol
I really like her and this song. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that she’s inspired by Taylor. She’s her own artist and all the greats have been inspired by other people.
I have to add that as a former Gleek, I’m low key disappointed that she’s never watched Glee. I was so excited that the show was mentioned in the song!
I can’t wait for her album. I really hope apocalyptic crush is on there (look the clip up on YouTube if you haven’t it’s great and I love it).
I know some people don't like her mentioning Taylor so much, but in this case I'd say it's a good thing and even kind of necessary - I don't have a problem with her getting inspired a lot by Lorde and Taylor (I like it, in fact - more music for me) but the Deja Vu bridge is so close to the Cruel Summer bridge it's almost a bit uncomfortable. So I think to be open about that being the inspiration is the right thing to do, and to just go "oh just got inspired to write this bridge for no reason" would be dishonest.
Even though I don't see any similarities between her and Taylor, I do like Olivia's music so far and I kind of wish she would stop mentioning Taylor in all (or a lot) of her interviews. Not only will this give the media and other interviewers an incentive to always ask about Taylor in every interview or compare her to Taylor, but it's also a disservice to Olivia. I'm sure that even as a fan, she doesn't want to live in Taylor's shadow.