Olivia Rodrigo dropped “Vampire,” the lead single from her yet-to-be-released sophomore album, Guts, at the very end of June. The rock-opera track immediately shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, and fans everywhere have been caught up in speculation about what — or whom — the song is about. Olivia sat down for a nearly 20-minute interview on SiriusXM Hits 1 to talk about her newest chart-topper and much more.
The lyrics tell a story about a “cool guy” she spent “six months of torture” with; a “bloodsucker” she truly loved but who “sold her for parts,” taking advantage of her age and naïveté. Unsurprisingly, rumours swirled about what industry veteran and/or ex-boyfriend Olivia could potentially be singing about.
The singer-songwriter confirmed that she wrote “Vampire” in December 2022 and chose it as the lead single because it “expressed something [she]’d been trying to express for a long time.” The track served as a good introduction to the “new world” of Guts, the 20-year-old said.
“To me, it’s not a song about, ‘Oh, this person hurt me, this guy hurt me.’ I think that’s kind of surface level,” Olivia clarified during an interview with Tony Fly and Symon on SiriusXM Hits 1. “To me, what I love about [‘Vampire’] is, it kind of looks inward. It’s more about my regret and kind of beating myself up for doing something that I knew wasn’t gonna turn out great. And kind of just taking ownership of that and dealing with those feelings.”
Olivia explained that she’s so close to these songs that it almost feels like putting out pages of her diary. But at the same time, she wants listeners to be able to relate to “Vampire” (and all the tracks off Guts) in their own way, so she doesn’t want to tie it to one specific story from her life that could alter fans’ relationships with the lyrics.
“That’s what [‘Vampire’] means to me, but obviously, anyone can have their own interpretation of it,” she added. “But that’s kind of why [the song] was so special to me.”
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