Olivia Rodrigo Says She’s Working on New Music

January 9, 2023

It’s been nearly two years since Olivia Rodrigo released her massive debut album SOUR, and it looks like new music is not very far away. The singer and actor shared a short clip across her Instagram story, showing her listening to a snippet of new music in the studio.

There’s not much to deduce from the snippet of music: it’s a thudding, low piano line. “Working on so many new songs,” she wrote on the clip. “I’m excited to show u! Thank u for everything.”

Olivia Rodrigo: ‘good 4 u’

The follow-up to SOUR would be one of the most highly anticipated pop releases of the year. We know that some kind of release will land this year: in a message to fans during Spotify Wrapped, Rodrigo confirmed that new music was on its way.

“Hey, it’s Olivia, I just wanted to say thank you so much for listening to my music this year; I really, truly couldn’t be more grateful,” she said. “I’m so excited for next year and all of the new things and new music that 2023 will bring.”

Rodrigo has said that the new music is a lot more positive than SOUR, and she’s reportedly linked up with SOUR producer Dan Nigro for work on the new record.

SOUR, which dropped in May 2021, followed the wild success of the single ‘drivers license’, which shot up charts around the world after its release in January 2021 and saw Rodrigo become one of the most talked about artists of the year. Subsequent singles ‘deja vu’ and ‘good 4 u’ also landed in the top three of the US Billboard Hot 100.

SOUR was just as successful, raking in over 385 million streams on Spotify in the first week of its release – at the time, it was the biggest opening week for an album by a female artist in the platform’s history.

It didn’t come without controversy: a number of artists, including Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, St Vincent, and Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Joshua Farro received songwriting credits after the album was released. This was due to a number of interpolations across SOUR (‘deja vu’ uses elements of Swift’s ‘Cruel Summer’, for instance) and some striking similarities between Paramore’s ‘Misery Business’ and Rodrigo’s ‘good 4 u’.