Olivia Rodrigo on Rumored Taylor Swift Feud: “I Don’t Have Beef with Anyone”
Olivia Rodrigo is opening up to Rolling Stone about her rumored feud with Taylor Swift, telling the outlet “I don’t have beef with anyone.” Swift, by the way, was given a songwriting credit on two tracks from Rodrigo’s album Sour following claims that they sounded similar, People reports.
“Rodrigo was a vocal Swift fan throughout the rollout of Sour and publicly became friendly with the superstar,” the outlet reports. “Shortly after the album dropped in 2021, however, Swift and her collaborators retroactively received songwriting credit on two of its songs—‘1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back’ and ‘Déjà Vu’—which reference ‘New Year’s Day’ and ‘Cruel Summer,’ respectively.”
After that, rumors swirled that Rodrigo and Swift had a falling out. “They haven’t been seen together in public or interacted on social media, and Swift’s since befriended fellow pop star Sabrina Carpenter, who’s largely believed not to get along with Rodrigo following their alleged love triangle with Joshua Bassett that supposedly inspired Rodrigo’s ‘Driver’s License,’” People reports. (Is this the music industry or high school?)
Let Rodrigo clear it up for you herself: “I don’t have beef with anyone,” she told Rolling Stone. “I’m very chill. I keep to myself. I have my four friends and my mom, and that’s really the only people I talk to, ever. There’s nothing to say.”
Rodrigo’s brand-new album, Guts, features two tracks that fans think take aim at Swift: “Vampire” (with the lyrics “I used to think I was smart / But you made me look so na?ve”) and “The Grudge” (“I try to be tough, I try to be mean / But even after all this, you’re still everything to me”). “There’s so many Twitter conspiracy theories,” Rodrigo said of the online rumors. “I only look at alien conspiracy theories.”
On social media in general, Rodrigo said “I was so overwhelmed by all of the social media s—t. I truly deleted my social media for six months. Because it was zero to 100, baptism by fire. I deleted all of it for a long time, and I’m so happy that I did at that moment. I have a better handle on it now, but then I was just so cold turkey with it. I’m trying to figure out a happy medium.”
In addition to giving Swift those two songwriting credits, she also gave Paramore credit on the song “Good 4 U,” which references the band’s “Misery Business.” “I was a little caught off guard,” Rodrigo said of the entire situation. “At the time it was very confusing, and I was green and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
When it came to amending the songwriting credits, she said “It’s not something that I was super involved in," seemingly noting that the decisions weren’t made via direct conversations with Swift or Paramore. “It was more team-on-team. So I wouldn’t be the best person to ask.”