Olivia Rodrigo knows betrayal. On her breakout hit “Drivers License,” she sings about heartbreak and abandonment after an ex moved on with a “that blonde girl;”
on her debut album Sour, she flat-out says “You betrayed me” on the track “Traitor.” On her sophomore album, Guts, which dropped last night, she continues to explore those feelings in different ways.
On the track “The Grudge” in particular, she sings about someone she had an “undying love” for who broke her trust and left her deeply hurt. In the first verse, she sings:
Trust that you betrayed, confusion that still lingers Took everything I loved and crushed it in between your fingers
And I doubt you ever think about the damage that you did But I hold onto every detail like my life depends on it
Who did this to Olivia?? Is it the “blood sucker” who inspired “Vampire” or the “master manipulator” from “Logical”? Or maybe the not-six-foot-two dude on “Get Him Back”?
Listeners on Twitter (okay, fine, X) were inclined to believe it was about someone else.
With rumors of a “feud”—take that with a chunk of salt—swirling around Rodrigo and her idol Taylor Swift, could this grudge be about her fellow pop star?
Some fans have speculated about beef between the two singers, stemming from Rodrigo handing 50 percent of the royalties of
her song “Deja Vu” to Swift following accusations that it sounded similar to her hit “Cruel Summer.”
The artists didn't address any of the retroactive crediting publicly, so who knows what really went down. Rodrigo even shut down theories that her song “Vampire” is about Swift.
She told The Guardian, “I mean, I never want to say who any of my songs are about. I’ve never done that before in my career and probably won’t.
I think it’s better to not pigeonhole a song to being about this one thing.” She added, “I was very surprised when people thought that.”