Olivia Rodrigo has released Drop Dead, her eagerly awaited new single, and it turns out that The Cure’s Robert Smith is still very much in her thoughts.
As you may recall, Rodrigo invited Smith on stage during her Glastonbury set last year, and the pair performed both Friday I’m In Love and Just Like Heaven. The moment clearly left a lasting impression on Rodrigo, as she name-checks the second of these songs just in Drop Dead’s first verse.
“I know that the bar closes at 11, but I hope you never finish that beer,” she begins, possibly referring to British licensing hours. This is followed by: “You know all the words to Just Like Heaven, and I know why he wrote them now that you’re standing right here.”
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He, presumably, is Smith, who we’re guessing may have briefed Rodrigo on his motivation for writing Just Like Heaven during one of their conversations.
And it seems that they’ve met up a few times since that Glastonbury gig; speaking to Vogue last month, Smith said of Rodrigo: “She calls me up quite a bit to talk about clothes and fashion – and we have enjoyed a couple of memorable nights in the studio together”.
Sounds like fun, though if he wants to feel old, Smith might recall that, in 2023, Rodrigo said that it was her dad that got her into The Cure (and Depeche Mode, for that matter), when he took her to watch “all the bands he went to see when he was my age.”
Smith doesn’t appear on Drop Dead – which, in its instrumental sections, bears a slight melodic resemblance to another Cure song, In Between Days – but it remains to be seen if he’ll make an appearance on her third studio album, You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love, which will be released on 12 June. Rodrigo describes this as a collection of “sad love songs”.
Drop Dead was co-written and produced by regular Rodrigo collaborator Dan Nigro, and there are also writing credits for both Rodrigo herself and the ubiquitous Amy Allen, who worked across both of Sabrina Carpenter’s two recent hit albums (Short n’ Sweet and Man’s Best Friend) and was named Songwriter of the Year at February’s Grammy Awards.
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