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\n Fans come to Rodrigo to give a voice to their most uncomfortable feelings. So even if the story this time is a rosy meet-cute instead of her usual agony, a maximalist, accessible sound and a dollop of heart-stopping drama are tenets for her now. The video for Olivia Rodrigo\u2019s new single, \u201cDrop Dead<\/a>,\u201d finds the 23-year-old ex-Disney singer-songwriter frolicking in the Palace of Versailles like the Louvre run in Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s 1964 French New Wave classic Bande \u00e0 part<\/em>. It\u2019s the kind of dance routine you get from an animated princess after she meets her future king consort, all surreptitious twirling but delivered in a baby-doll dress Courtney Love might\u2019ve shred in the \u201990s. The lead single off Rodrigo\u2019s forthcoming third album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love<\/em><\/a>, immediately teases this project\u2019s story: She\u2019s spending a lot of time in Europe nauseatingly falling for a local and the nearby culture; she doesn\u2019t make it out of the first verse before name-checking \u201cJust Like Heaven\u201d by the Cure, the flagship act of Britain\u2019s hopeless romantic, Robert Smith. The song details the chase it took to meet her suitor as well as the mountain of plans that congeals in her head as the ocean-crossed lovers become entangled.<\/p>\n Rodrigo is turning a new corner for her lead singles, which have previously positioned her as someone terrible things happen to. In her 2021 breakthough \u201cDrivers License,\u201d she cruises past the street of the ex who dumped her for someone else, and in 2023\u2019s scathing \u201cVampire,\u201d she rails against a \u201cbloodsucker, fame fucker\u201d who gloms onto younger girls. \u201cDrop Dead\u201d inverts the power dynamic: Rodrigo is excited about getting what she wants but is still finding a way to ache.<\/p>\n The lyrics of \u201cDrop Dead\u201d speak to a new level of agency for Rodrigo as a lover and writer (\u201cOne night I was bored in bed \/ And stalked you on the internet\u201d). They brim with the world-traveler ethos of someone who last summer wrapped over a year of arena dates, on tour for her 2023 sophomore album, Guts<\/em>. They also speak to her new level of celebrity. The Cure reference (\u201cYou know all the words to \u2018Just Like Heaven\u2019 \/ And I know why he wrote them \/ Now that you\u2019re standin\u2019 right here\u201d) is notable because Smith and Rodrigo are actually friends who performed<\/a> that song together at Glastonbury last year. Shooting the video at Versailles and making an offer to her lover in verse two to travel the world (\u201cI got chewing gum and a bunch of stuff I\u2019d like to know \/ Like, have you ever been to Japan? Or taken that Eurostar to France?\u201d) are A-lister flexes. That all feels fresh for Rodrigo, who seems to be walking us into an account of her relationship with the British actor Louis Partridge after a breakup late last year.<\/p>\n
\n Photo: Olivia Rodrigo via YouTube<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n