Olivia Rodrigo says she felt “so much pressure to please everyone” with ‘Guts’

Olivia Rodrigo has spoken about the “pressure to please everyone” with ‘Guts’.

The musician recently appeared at Variety‘s Hitmakers event, where she was honoured with the Storyteller of the Year Award. In her acceptance speech, Rodrigo spoke about writing her new song ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’, which she wrote for the new Hunger Games: A The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes soundtrack.

“Telling stories through songwriting has been my favorite thing to do for as long as I can remember,” she began. “I write to figure out how I feel, to move through my emotions, and to commemorate and honor seasons of my life.

“I also got the chance to write a song for the new ‘Hunger Games’ movie recently and it taught me how much I also loved writing songs from another person’s point of view and how fun and collaborative it can be.”

She then said it hasn’t “always been effortless by any means” to write songs, explaining this was “especially” the case making ‘Guts‘, her second studio album.

“I had so many voices in my head and I felt so much pressure to please everyone with the music I was making,” she continued. She then “jokingly” called these doubts “‘the dread,’ like a horror movie.”

“I found that just simply showing up to create something everyday, even if I didn’t feel extremely inspired, was what pulled me out of that dread and made me start to get really excited about the music I was making,” she said.

Rodrigo also gave ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’ its live debut at the Jingle Bell Ball – watch the moment below:

In our five-star review of ‘Guts’, NME praised the record as “as a display of real power, range and versatility – all of which Rodrigo possesses in abundance.”

“On ‘Guts’, Olivia Rodrigo goes to war for every young woman who has been unable to articulate why it is so belittling not to be taken seriously. In the orbit of her urgent and riotous second album, the 20-year-old turns her own vulnerabilities into a rallying cry: here, she’s a songwriter of control, diving headfirst into the collective female experience while also pursuing adventure, desire and relief.”

Speaking in a previous interview with Variety, Rodrigo also said writing ‘Guts’ “tested her confidence”. “It taught me some important lessons about songwriting in terms of focusing on your craft rather than just waiting for inspiration to strike,” she said.

“It taught me about the mindset that is most conducive to writing: You can never sit down at the piano and try to write something that everyone will like; that always results in a really bad song. It taught me that I write songs that I want to hear.”

In other news, Rodrigo has been announced alongside Billie Eilish as the final musical guests of 2023 for Saturday Night Live. 

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