Popcast: Olivia Rodrigo Tried Writing Love Songs. Then Life Got Messy.

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.3 • 107.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2026

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Olivia Rodrigo sat down with Joe and Jon for her first in-depth conversation about her new album, “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love,” out June 12. She discussed the many ways her creative process intersects with the extracurricular noise of pop superstardom, whether its managing relationship drama, being targeted for the way she dresses; accusations of pilfering songwriting gestures from Taylor Swift, her onetime idol, or her willingness to speak up about political and social causes in a way many of her peers won’t.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Michael.
0:01.8	Today, we're going to do something a little bit different.
0:04.2	We're going to hand our show over to our colleagues at Popcast, The Times Pop Culture Show.
0:10.4	It's hosted by music critic John Caramanica and culture reporter Joe Koscarelli.
0:17.3	You've heard both of them on the daily before talking about Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance,
0:22.8	not to mention Joe's interview with Taylor Swift, which was featured in our episode a few weeks
0:27.7	ago about the 30 greatest living American songwriters, except of course for Billy Joel,
0:33.4	who got snubbed. The big news is that podcastcast will now be coming out every week as both an audio
0:40.3	and video show featuring some of the biggest names in music and culture, like Asap Rocky,
0:47.6	Anne Hathaway, Rosalia, and many more. We love what Popcast is doing, and we want to share it with you. So take a listen
0:56.2	to John and Joe's recent interview with the singer Olivia Rodrigo about her new album, her songwriting
1:03.7	process, and her thoughts about speaking out about politics. You can find Popcast every Thursday
1:10.7	at NYTimes.com slash podcast at YouTube.com slash
1:16.8	podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:20.8	Okay.
1:21.6	Enjoy the show.
1:23.7	I actually don't think I've never really done a podcast before, too.
1:27.3	I think this is my first real one. I've never, like, sat down and done like a two-hour conversation thing. So. All right. We'll get comfy. Yeah, I'm comfy. Yeah, I'm comfy. Yeah, I'm comfy. Yeah, I'm cross those arms. Uncross those arms. Like, real loose. Real loose. Everyone take a deep breath. Young Lean taught us how to do breath work. Erica Badu taught us how to do breath work.
1:45.7	I would trust Erica Badu with my life.
1:47.7	We did fire breathing with her.
1:49.5	Oh, wow.
1:51.2	Sometimes that makes me more.
	...

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