It’s World Goth Day (who knew?) and Olivia Rodrigo has released a new song called The Cure. But no, it’s not about the band of the same name – although she is, famously, friends with frontman Robert Smith.
Rodrigo was quizzed on the potential World Goth Day/The Cure connection on the Elvis Duran Show, but confirmed that she wasn’t even aware of it.
“Honestly, this song, The Cure, has nothing to do with the band, The Cure – although I love [the band] so much – but it is just a happy coincidence, I suppose,” she says.
Rodrigo previously revealed that The Cure is her favourite song on her forthcoming new album, You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love, and she said something similar to Duran.
“I'm really really proud of this song,” she says. “I absolutely love it and I'm really excited for people to hear it. I think it's like a new perspective that I haven't really had the maturity maybe to express before in earlier albums. And yeah, I'm really obsessed with it. I'm really excited to put it out.”
Beginning with rhythmic acoustic guitar strums and vocals, The Cure has one of Rodrigo’s trademark big choruses and builds to a pounding crescendo complete with drums, synths and strings.
Discussing her evolution as a songwriter more generally, Rodrigo says that she’s come to appreciate the importance of editing.
“I think editing is a really important part of the creative process that I didn't really realise when I was younger,” she notes. “When I was younger, making stuff, I was kind of just like vomiting an idea and being like, ‘Let's put it out.’ And I think it's really fun for me to go in and refine things and tweak things. I think there's something kind of beautiful and artistic about that.”
These edits, says Rodrigo, are on the production side, too – “little things that maybe nobody else would notice, but something that me and my producer [Dan Nigro] just spend hours kind of tweaking.”
And yes, before you ask, Rodrigo is still in regular contact with Robert Smith, who she duetted with at Glastonbury last year. “We talk, like, every week,” she reports. “He's amazing.”
