Olivia Rodrigo on Her ‘Hunger Games’ Ballad: “This Got Me to Flex New Muscles”

This year Olivia Rodrigo cemented her status as one of pop’s most formative voices, proving that her initial breakout and acclaim for “drivers license” was no fluke, thank you very much. And before she heads into an even bigger 2024, which will include an arena tour for her sophomore album GUTS and turning 21, she’s trying out something new: lending her talents to the big screen.

Last year, she was asked by the powers that be at The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes to preview the movie, just in case musical inspiration struck. The result is the film’s theme “Can’t Catch Me Now,” an emotive and powerful acoustic anthem where Rodrigo lushly harmonizes with herself and proves that—along with piano ballads, pop confections, and alternative rock—the star’s deft talent shines through a folk lens as well. The song is currently earning Oscar buzz, and marks one more step towards Rodrigo’s world domination.

Vanity Fair: You earned a slew of Grammy nominations and also have Oscar buzz for the Hunger Games song. How are you feeling?

Olivia Rodrigo: It’s totally surreal and it’s all just so exciting. At the end of the day, I love making music and expressing myself and making things that inspire me. The fact that other people like it and are nominating it for Grammys and all that other stuff, it’s icing on the cake. I’m very grateful.

Coldplay, Taylor Swift, and Lorde have all recorded a song for the Hunger Games films. That’s not bad company. I know you were a fan before, right? But how diehard of a fan were you?

I actually read the books before I watched the movies when I was younger. I remember tearing through the books thinking they were so fascinating. Funny enough, I don’t think I watched all the movies until this year. But I fell in love with all of them and I think Jennifer Lawrence is incredible, obviously. More than anything though, I’ve been a really big fan of the soundtracks. I grew up listening to them and I think they just do a really good job of kind of capturing the essence of the movies.

All of your songs are autobiographical, or at the very least semi-autobiographical. So then would that make “Can’t Catch Me Now” one of the only songs you’ve written that has nothing to do with your personal life? Or maybe it does…

I think that was the fun challenge for me as a songwriter. I write a lot of my songs for my album from a very diaristic standpoint; I write them to process how I feel, which is so much fun. But this got me to flex new muscles to write a song for The Hunger Games through the eyes of another character, Lucy Gray. I think restriction is very inspiring to creatively. If you had every color and palette and any size canvas you’d want, it’d kind of feel overwhelming and you wouldn’t make anything particularly inspiring. But I think by restricting yourself, you can kind of force your brain to work in different ways and have a really fun time doing it. So while it was very much about Lucy Gray, I think I injected parts of myself into it too. I saw bits of myself in her; I admired her resilience, so I tried to embody all that and put it into the song.

In your career as a songwriter, you’ve made this choice to write these diaristic songs like you’ve said. Not every songwriter gets so personal in their music. Right from the bat were you writing truthful tracks from your personal experiences, or was there an evolution?