Olivia Rodrigo is not one to hide her inspirations. From Tori Amos to No Doubt, the girl is fascinated by her predecessors. And now she’s giving it up for one of her clearest ancestors in the lineage of pop girlies: Lorde. Called to the THR roundtable to chat with film-songwriting peers about her contribution to the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Rodrigo establishes herself as the youngest person in a room with Billie Eilish by saying the first album she purchased was Lorde’s 2013 debut Pure Heroine. “I remember getting my first phone, I was probably 12 or 13, and the first thing I did was download Lorde, Pure Heroine,†Rodrigo recalls.
Like you, Rodrigo credits Lorde with representing life in the suburbs in a way she’d never heard before. “I remember listening to it as I first started writing songs and just being blown away by her lyrics,†Rodrigo said. “I remember never hearing my life being put into a song like that. It just made being young and doing these seemingly unimportant things feel so sacred and beautiful. That album’s one of my favorites, and she still inspires me to this day.†It makes sense that Rodrigo would be writing for The Hunger Games, then, because Lorde was the OG Hunger Games girlie, running the soundtrack for that first movie like a tight ship, sending plot summaries to Charli XCX, and banging out 2014’s “Yellow Flicker Beat,†which still goes off. Passing the torch is beautiful, but we’d prefer if Rodrigo didn’t pick up the habit of putting an album out every four years.