For a while, it appeared there was no bigger Swiftie than Olivia Rodrigo.
Like many singer-songwriters of her generation, Rodrigo grew up admiring Taylor Swift. As she navigated teen stardom in the early stages of her pop career, Rodrigo frequen tly cited Swift as one of her biggest inspirations.
Initially, Swift-Rodrigo relations were peachy. Swift welcomed the up-and-coming star and seemed to take her under her wing, celebrating her early wins as Rodrigo rose to fame. Rodrigo, in turn, was ecstatic to have captured her idol’s attention. They finally met — and even took cuddly photos together — at the 2021 Brit Awards.
Their dynamic seemed to shift after the release of “Sour,” Rodrigo’s debut album, which catapulted Rodrigo to the center of the mainstream pop conversation. Rodrigo started avoiding the topic of Swift in interviews, and, as far as we know, she didn’t attend the Eras Tour.
Keep reading for a complete timeline of the twists and turns in Swift and Rodrigo’s relationship.
April 2020: Rodrigo covers Swift’s song, earning Swift’s praise
In the throes of the pandemic, Rodrigo shared a video of herself on Instagram singing Swift’s “Cruel Summer” as part of the MTV Alone Together Jam Session. Swift reposted the video on her Instagram Story and wrote, “THE TALENT. Love This!!! Thanks for this beautiful performance @olivia.rodrigo @mtv.”
Rodrigo, then 17, gushed about being noticed by her idol on social media, writing in all caps, “TAYLOR SWIFT IS THE REASON I WRITE SONGS” and “I AM GONNA FRAME THIS SCREENSHOT AND HANG IT ABOVE MY FIRSTBORN’S CRIB.”
At the time, Rodrigo hadn’t released any of her own music yet and was mostly known for starring in the Disney+ series, “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.” Swift had released her sixth album, “Lover,” to massive commercial success but mixed critical response, and had to cancel her planned “Lover Fest” tour dates because of the pandemic.
January 2021: Rodrigo celebrates her breakthrough single, and Swift congratulates her
Rodrigo’s debut single, “Drivers License,” was a surprise overnight sensation, rising to No. 2 on the US iTunes chart, just below Swift at No. 1. Rodrigo shared a now-deleted screenshot on Instagram, captioned, “Next to Taylor on the US iTunes chart. I’m in a puddle of tears.”
Swift commented, “I say that’s my baby and I’m proud.” Fans ate up the mentor-mentee moment, and Swift’s comment quickly became an internet meme used to express pride for an artist’s achievement.
Rodrigo gushed about the interaction with Swift, telling Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that she’d looked up to Swift for a long time and “just about died” when she got a response from her.
“Drivers License” went on to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for eight weeks.
March 2021: Swift gifts Rodrigo a $3,200 ring that doubles as Swiftlore
Rodrigo revealed in an interview with SiriusXM that Swift had sent her a package with a gold ring, similar to the one Swift wore during a photo shoot for her 2012 album “Red.”
“She is absolutely the kindest individual in the whole world. Actually, last night — like literally 12 hours ago — I got a package from her with this handwritten note. And she gave me this ring because she said she wore one just like it when she wrote ‘Red’ and she wanted me to have one like it,” Rodrigo said.
At the time, Swift was preparing for the release of “Red (Taylor’s Version),” which would drop in November 2021.
April 2021: Rodrigo releases her second hit single, helps Swift promote her new album — and makes a critical PR mistake
Pay attention to this song, because it will become a recurring motif in the Rodrigo-Swift saga.
On April 1, Rodrigo released “Deja Vu,” which was praised by critics and became a top-three hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
The same week as the song’s release, Rodrigo and her best friend Conan Gray helped promote Swift’s first rerecorded album, “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” with a post on X. Swift also posted on X to promote the re-recording, referring to Gray and Rodrigo as her “two kids.”
Also that week, Rodrigo told Rolling Stone that she drew inspiration from Swift’s song “Cruel Summer” for the bridge of “Deja Vu.”
“I love the yell-y vocals in it,” Rodrigo said, “so I wanted to do something like that.”
May 7, 2021: Rodrigo credits Swift with helping her navigate the music industry
In an interview with The Guardian, Rodrigo revealed that she retained control of her master recordings when she signed her contract with Interscope/Geffen the previous year. She said she was inspired by Swift’s public fight to own her music, which kicked off the “Taylor’s Version” project.
“I want to be a songwriter,” Rodrigo explained. “I don’t want to be the biggest pop star that ever lived.”
May 11, 2021: Rodrigo and Swift meet for the first time
Swift and Rodrigo finally met backstage at the 2021 Brit Awards, where Swift received the Brits Icon Award, and Rodrigo performed “Drivers License.” They posed for photos together, one of which Rodrigo shared on Instagram (captioned “🥺🥺🥺🥺”), but it has since been deleted.
Shortly after their fateful meeting, Rodrigo gushed about Swift to NME.
“I’ve always looked up to Taylor since I was literally five years old,” Rodrigo said. “Obviously, I think she’s the best songwriter of all time, but she’s so business-savvy, and she really cares about her career in that regard too — that’s been really inspiring for me to watch somebody take control of their career and their life like that.”
Rodrigo also revealed that her favorite album of Swift’s is 2010’s “Speak Now,” adding that she would love to be featured on the rerecorded version.
Alas, “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” would eventually be released in July 2023, featuring duets with Hayley Williams and Fall Out Boy, but no Rodrigo.
May 21, 2021: Rodrigo releases ‘Sour,’ with Swift credited as a cowriter on the album’s fourth track
Rodrigo originally intended to release an EP called “Sour,” but following the positive response to “Drivers License,” she was eager to stretch her creative muscles and convinced her label to let her make a full-length album. She told The Guardian that she worked 13-hour days, seven days a week, to finish it.
“Sour,” which also included the hit single “Good 4 U,” received positive reviews and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Notably, the album’s fourth track, an anxious ballad called “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back,” interpolates the piano riff from Swift’s 2017 song “New Year’s Day.” Both Swift and her producer, Jack Antonoff, were credited as cowriters alongside Rodrigo and her producer, Dan Nigro.
On the album’s remaining 10 songs, only Rodrigo and Nigro were credited upon release. (Casey Smith is also credited as a cowriter on track nine, “Jealousy, Jealousy.”)
July 2021: The ‘Deja Vu’ credits are updated to include Swift as a cowriter
Months after the release of “Sour,” the “Deja Vu” production credits were retroactively updated to list Swift, Antonoff, and Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent), who all worked on “Cruel Summer,” as cowriters alongside Rodrigo and Nigro.
This means that Rodrigo and Nigro split the song’s royalties with the “Cruel Summer” trio.
To be clear: Swift did not sue for credit, as some fans have claimed online. There is no evidence that Swift took legal action against Rodrigo. It’s more likely their teams came to an agreement behind the scenes after Rodrigo publicly cited Swift’s song as inspiration for “Deja Vu.”
The following month, Rodrigo continued sharing the wealth: She gave Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams and ex-guitarist Josh Farro writing credits on “Good 4 U.” Sources told Variety the revision was made to reflect an interpolation of the band’s 2007 pop-punk hit “Misery Business.”
The retroactive credit is an increasingly common move in the music industry, now that plagiarism lawsuits have become commonplace, pricey, and unpredictable. (See: Robin Thicke and Ed Sheeran, who were both sued over comparisons to Marvin Gaye’s music. Thicke lost, while Sheeran won.)
Williams, however, seemed to disagree with this tack. She reacted to the news on her Instagram Story, writing, “Our publisher is wildin [right now]” — implying that Paramore’s publisher pushed for credit in order to capitalize on Rodrigo’s success. Billboard reported that between “Deja Vu” and “Good 4 U,” Rodrigo gave up millions in publishing royalties.
“It’s not something that I was super involved in,” Rodrigo later told Rolling Stone. “It was more team-on-team.”
Meanwhile, amid comparisons between Rodrigo’s song “Brutal” and Elvis Costello’s 1978 hit “Pump It Up,” the British rocker praised Rodrigo.
“It’s how rock and roll works,” Costello wrote on X. “You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That’s what I did.”
August 2023: Rodrigo confirms that she hasn’t attended the Eras Tour
Swift’s Eras Tour dominated pop culture in 2023, drawing a wide array of celebrity guests, from Shania Twain and Lupita Nyong’o to Flavor Flav and Karlie Kloss. Many were spotted trading friendship bracelets with fans and singing along to Swift’s hit songs.
Rodrigo, however, was never spotted in the VIP tent at the Eras Tour, raising eyebrows among fans. She told The New York Times that her schedule was too booked to attend while promoting her sophomore album, “Guts.”
“I haven’t yet,” she said, days before the tour’s first US leg ended. “I’m going to Europe this week.”
September 2023: Rodrigo addresses speculation that her song ‘Vampire’ was inspired by Swift, and denies rumors of a feud
During the promo campaign for “Guts,” Rodrigo was repeatedly asked about her relationship with Swift.
Amid rumors of a feud, Rodrigo told Rolling Stone, “I don’t have beef with anyone.”
“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,” she added.
Rodrigo was also asked to address speculation about the “Guts” lead single, “Vampire,” whose lyrics seem to condemn a certain “blood sucker, fame-fucker” for taking advantage of her. Some fans interpreted the song as about an ex-boyfriend, namely Zack Bia, while others believed it was inspired by the “Deja Vu” credit dispute.
Rodrigo said she was “very surprised” people thought “Vampire” could be about Swift.
“I mean, I never want to say who any of my songs are about,” Rodrigo told The Guardian. “I’ve never done that before in my career and probably won’t. I think it’s better to not pigeonhole a song to being about this one thing.”
The 10th track on “Guts,” titled “The Grudge,” also sparked theories that Rodrigo could be singing about Swift: “You built me up to watch me fall,” Rodrigo sings in the bridge. “You have everything, and you still want more.”
February 2024: Swift gives Rodrigo a standing ovation at the Grammys
During Rodrigo’s performance of “Vampire” — yes, the same song that some fans believed to be about Swift — at the 2024 Grammys, Swift was seen singing along from the crowd. She stood during the entire performance, while most of the room remained seated, and gave Rodrigo a standing ovation at the end.
Rodrigo later applauded Swift when she took home the Grammy for best pop vocal album, a category in which Rodrigo was also nominated.
April 2024: Swift releases a song about the music industry pitting women against each other
Swift’s 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” ends with a track called “Clara Bow.” The song’s perspective switches between a powerful Hollywood executive and a hopeful ingenue.
Swift told Amazon Music the lyrics were inspired by real conversations she had with label execs as a child.
“They’d say, ‘You know, you remind us of,’ and then they’d name an artist, and then they’d kind of say something disparaging about her,” Swift said. “That’s how we teach women to see themselves, as like, ‘You could be the new replacement for this woman who’s done something great before you.'”
At the end of the song, Swift imagines herself as the woman being replaced by a new artist: “You look like Taylor Swift / In this light / We’re loving it / You’ve got edge / She never did.”
Swift has explored this fear before, namely in “Nothing New,” a song she wrote in 2012, when she was 22. (“I know someday I’m gonna meet her, it’s a fever dream / The kind of radiance you only have at 17 / She’ll know the way, and then she’ll say she got the map from me / I’ll say I’m happy for her, then I’ll cry myself to sleep.”)
“You learn that like, you’re in this machine and they’re trying to make you into a woman that they just idealized and then discarded,” Swift recently told The New York Times. “The entertainment industry love-bombs women.”
Many fans have noted the parallels between Swift’s imagined usurper and Rodrigo, a young songwriter and critical darling who studied Swift’s craft and business savvy.
May 2026: Rodrigo half-answers a question about her relationship with Swift
While promoting her third album, “You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love,” Rodrigo was again asked about the feud rumors.
She told Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli of The New York Times’ “Popcast” podcast that she found the online speculation exhausting.
“I really don’t read too far into it,” Rodrigo said. “I think if I dove into every internet detective sleuth that got things right or wrong about my life or any of my relationships, I think I would just go crazy. There’s just not enough time in the day.”
When directly asked by Caramanica if there was a “frost” between her and Swift, Rodrigo seemed eager to move on from the whole ordeal.
“I don’t know, I think I try to not let it get to me or upset me,” Rodrigo said.
“It was so long ago, there’s no use in harping on it,” she continued. “I just try to make songs that I love and try to be kind and good to other people and supportive of other people. And at the end of the day, I think that’s all you can do.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post A timeline of Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo’s relationship — and why some fans think they have beef appeared first on Business Insider.
