Olivia Rodrigo Covers COSMOPOLITAN ‘Summer Issue’!

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With over 46 million monthly listeners, two multiplatinum records, two sold-out world tours, three Grammys, and a current number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for her single “drop dead” (making her the first artist in history to hit number 1 on this chart with all three lead singles from their first three albums), Olivia Rodrigo is undeniably the voice of a generation. She’s also just a girl preoccupied with everything typical of a 23-year-old, like decoding her crush’s zodiac sign or accepting that she doesn’t have it all figured out yet. Olivia is navigating love and life like the rest of us, but she’s also writing the songs that help us get through those moments.

While her Livies (and the world) eagerly await the release of her third studio album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, Olivia graces the cover of COSMOPOLITAN’s Summer issue, The Beauty Issue. In her first in-depth interview since announcing her new album and releasing the single “drop dead,” Olivia opens up to Madison Hu—her best friend and closest confidant, actor (the two first met as costars on Disney Channel’s Bizaardvark), and Columbia University creative writing graduate—about surviving her angsty years, her evolving approach to songwriting, chasing joy in her music, what she’s learned about love, the relationships she’s prioritizing, her goals for the future, and how her friends help her figure it all out. Plus, in a video accompanying the cover story, Olivia Rodrigo sits with COSMOPOLITAN editor-in-chief Willa Bennett for an afternoon of vision-boarding and manifesting the year ahead.

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On how turning 23 feels different than 22: “I just feel a lot less afraid, in a good way. The year is off to a great start.”

On what was on her mind while making the new album: “I was really excited to write about joy, love, and passion in a way that I had never really done. Most of my big songs are about being sad, angry, heartbroken.”

On whether she finds it hard to write about happiness and whether it’s cringier to be happy or sad: “It’s not hard to do when I’m sitting there by myself in my room, but it was never the stuff that I put out. Sometimes I listen back to it and I cringe….It’s cringier to be happy. I cringe, but I’m free. All of my favorite love songs have an element of sadness, and that’s what makes them so beautiful. A great love song has so much emotion behind it that it could go either way. I want to make love songs that you can cry to.”

On her third studio album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love: “We really edited the hell out of this album. There was so much more joy in the songwriting. There are some songs that are plain old sad but also some songs that are just plain old fun.”

On how her songwriting process for you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love differed from her last two albums: “We didn’t have time for revisions on SOUR. The whole world was watching. I wrote and we just fucking recorded and put it out. Then with GUTS, I was under so much pressure, like, Oh my god, I’m never going to be able to make another good song. It wasn’t even making music to make music. It was making music to please people or prove something….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.”

On how she has changed from the person who made SOUR five years ago: “I was so young then and felt like the world was on my shoulders and that I had to have everything together. I was motivated, but there was fear. Now I feel a lot more self-assured. My passion and work ethic come from a place of positivity rather than a scared mindset.”

On what’s allowed her to be in this new place: “For five years, I got to travel the world, perform on awards shows that had always been dreams of mine. It was trial by fire—if I can get through this really high-pressure situation, I can get through anything. But knowing I had people around me like you, I could go up onstage and miss a note and still be loved.”

 On anxiety: “I’m serving anxious forever. I was really nervous the first 10 shows of the GUTS tour. It was hard to be away from home and not have any sense of normalcy. I was freaking out; my nervous system was crashing out. I still get anxious. It’s just different than when I was younger.”

On the tactic she relies on when she’s nervous during a performance: “I always pick out a person and just sing to them; everyone else is just on the side.”

On what the GUTS tour taught her about herself: “This sounds so cheesy, but the power of music. I had never been to the Philippines in my life, and being able to go there and play in an arena of 55,000 people is so crazy. I loved watching the young girls in the crowd sing songs like ‘traitor.’”

On a boundary she’s proud of setting recently: “I always thought a boundary was like, ‘Don’t do this.’ But actually, a boundary is like, ‘If you do this, this is how I will react and protect myself.’ It’s not about controlling other people, it’s about how you will respond: If somebody does this, I will be okay because I have this plan in place of what I’m going to do. It gives you so much more confidence and self-assuredness. And honestly, setting boundaries with yourself is really important, too. Saying you’re going to do something and actually doing it. For me, the phone stuff has got to go. Otherwise, I’m a brain rot person.”

On what will have her feeling the next year is a success: “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. But personally, I’d love to be surrounded by people I love.”

On what phase of love she’s in right now: “I’m in the most important phase, the friendship love that I’m sitting right across from. Best friend, community love. Dating is just the cherry on top.”

On a goal she has for herself that has nothing to do with music, love, or friendship: “Since I was really young, I’ve been grinding. I want to have more hobbies, other things that bring me passion. I have my friends and I have my work, but I feel like there’s a third other space that I can tap into.”

On filming her music video for “drop dead” at Versailles: “I really do love Versailles, and we filmed my music video in Versailles. So insane. It was, like, the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my life. And I was pinching myself that I got to be there. And we were there alone. We were in this gorgeous space that kings and queens used to live in. It was kind of giving Night At the Museum vibes. I was like, ‘Oh my, these paintings are gonna, like, come off the wall and haunt me.’”

On why the song “drop dead”—which was inspired by a really great first date—was her first video from the album: “I set out making this album, and I really wanted to capture joy and, like, infatuation and all these beautiful, like, kind of exciting feelings that I feel like I haven’t captured in the last two albums. People kind of know me for, like, heartbreak, angsty songs. I kind of wanted to challenge myself creatively to make something that felt happy and joyful, because I’m a super happy, positive person in day-to-day life….I just wanted to capture the feeling of that first interaction you have with someone where you’re just like, Oh my god, like, this could be the best thing ever. I feel so great right now. I’m gonna go tell all my friends. It really just reminds me of like running around in a city and feeling young and free, and it’s feeling that I felt a lot while I was writing the album. And I think that that song captures it really well.”

[Photo Credit: Morgan Maher for Cosmopolitan Magazine]

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