It’s most likely secure to say that the NPR Tiny Desk sequence hasn’t seen this a lot pop pleasure and ache combined with so many four-letter phrases earlier than. Olivia Rodrigo stopped by public radio’s most well-known cubicle not too long ago and after ripping by “Love is Embarrassing” from the her sophomore album, GUTS, Rodrigo recalled that her first go to to Tiny Desk got here within the midst of the pandemic, forcing her to carry out at a emptied-out DMV.
“It’s a lot cooler to be right here,” she mentioned of the famed overstuffed NPR efficiency area. “I’ve by no means been star-struck by a room earlier than, so this can be a big honor.” Rodrigo additionally offered some context for “Embarrassing,” describing an evening spent mendacity in mattress “taking part in again each embarrassing factor you’ve ever carried out and cringing at your self.”
She then switched to the album’s lacerating first single, “Vampire,” which she mentioned she wrote in 20-Half-hour, however then spent a month sharpening with producer Dan Nigro right into a excessive sheen. Sitting on the piano, Rodrigo was joined by a 3 individual choir, who gave the kiss-off to an energy-sucking ex an eerie finality as they crooned “how do you lie, how do you lie?” over the track’s revamped, looser association.
Rodrigo defined that “Lacy” got here to her after writing it up as an project in a poetry class at USC final yr, marking the primary time she’d ever written a track by taking a totally fashioned lyric after which placing a melody to it, reasonably than engaged on each concurrently is her normal methodology. “It was a enjoyable experiment for me as a songwriter and it turned out to be one in every of my favourite songs on the file,” she mentioned earlier than taking part in the shifting ballad on a lavender acoustic guitar, backed solely by the choir.
The four-song set ended with Rodrigo alone on the piano “Making the Mattress,” a observe she wrote in New York that matches one of many album’s themes of taking accountability on your actions. “Need it, so I obtained it, so it’s carried out/ One other factor I ruined I used to do for enjoyable/ One other piece of plastic, I may simply throw away/ One other dialog with nothing good to say,” she sang in a hushed tone.
Watch Rodrigo’s Tiny Desk present beneath.
