Featured Image Credit: Olivia Rodrigo Instagram
Topics: Celebs, Music, Olivia Rodrigo, T-Swift
Ilana Frost
Topics: Celebs, Music, Olivia Rodrigo, T-Swift
Never meet your heroes, folks — especially if they’re blonde billionaire pop titans. It may lead to a masterpiece ballad like “the grudge” by Olivia Rodrigo, but since you’re not a Grammy-winning songwriter, it’s more likely to just lead to disappointment and depression. Olivia’s falling out with Taylor Swift is old news in 2024, but as a pop fan, I sensed there was something going on back in 2021, shortly after the infamous credits debacle occurred. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Olivia’s team quietly added Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, and Annie Clark as songwriters on “deja vu” in July 2021 because of supposed similarities to Taylor’s “Cruel Summer.” Olivia abruptly stopped bringing up Taylor in interviews, and there was not a single Taylor song on the SOUR tour pre-show playlist.
Why is the Taylor and Olivia of it all relevant again, you ask? Welp, fans have noticed that Taylor’s name makes an appearance in Olivia’s GUTS concert film. Let’s get into it: Here’s why Taylor Swift is credited in Olivia Rodrigo’s new Netflix movie.
If you’re a person of taste who recently watched Olivia’s Olivia Rodrigo: Guts World Tour film, you may have noticed a lengthy Taylor section in the credits. Under “deja vu,” there’s a sentence that reads: “This composition embodies portions of ‘Cruel Summer’ written by Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff and Annie Clark, published by Taylor Swift Music, Sony Tree Publishing, Ducky Donath Music, Sony Songs, Hipgnosis Music and Nail Polish Manifesto Music.” I have to agree with the Twitter user who shared a screenshot of the credits and wrote: “oh BROTHER.” Oh, brother indeed.
Three years later, I still can’t believe Taylor demanded songwriting credits and 50 percent of the song royalties from a then-teenage Swiftie who idolized her… all because Olivia chanted the “deja vu” bridge like Taylor chanted the “Cruel Summer” bridge. Taylor invented many musical techniques, but chant-singing is not one of them. Listen to these two songs back to back, and I’m sure you will be just as perplexed by this credits issue as I am.
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When Rolling Stone asked Olivia about the credits in a September 2023 interview, she said she was “a little caught off guard.” The singer explained, “At the time it was very confusing, and I was green and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed… I don’t think I would ever personally do that. But who’s to say where I’ll be in 20, 30 years? All that I can do is write my songs and focus on what I can control.” Tea.
Is it a coincidence that Olivia left “1 step forward, 3 steps back” off the GUTS tour setlist? Probably not. For that SOUR song, she got permission to use the piano part from Taylor’s song, “New Year’s Day,” so Taylor’s a credited songwriter there too.
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Clearly, this was settled behind the scenes. But Olivia might’ve told us the story in “the grudge,” in which she recalls a phone call she got one “Friday in May” that traumatized her. She sings: “One phone call from you and my entire world was changed / Trust that you betrayed, confusion that still lingers / Took everything I loved and crushed it in between your fingers.”
But it’s the bridge of “the grudge” that hurts the most. Olivia croons, “Ooh, do you think I deserved it all? / Ooh, your flowers filled with vitriol / You built me up to watch me fall / You have everything and you still want more.” She admits that even after everything, this person (maybe Taylor) is still “everything” to her.