Today, Grammy Award-winning and multi-platinum selling singer/songwriter Olivia Rodrigo has returned with her brand new single, “vampire.’ The track is lifted from her upcoming highly anticipated sophomore album, GUTS, which will be released on September 8th via Geffen Records. Head here to pre-order the special limited-edition physical versions of the single, which includes Rodrigo’s first demo fo the track, here.
Produced and co-written with Daniel Nigro (also Rodrigo’s main creative partner on SOUR), “vampire” marks a departure from he dreamy minimalism of past hits like her 5x platinum breakthrough single “drivers license.” To that end, “vampire” kicks off with a hushed intense luring you in before bursting into a full-fledged epic built on pulse-pounding drumbeats and frantic yet magnificent piano work. All of this is further lead by Rodrigo’s vocals, which have seemingly reached new heights.
“I was upset about a certain situation and went to the studio alone and sat down at the grand piano, and the chords and melody and lyrics just poured out of me — almost like an out-of-body experience,” Rodrigo recalls. “It’s a song about feeling confused and hurt, and at first I thought it was meant to be a piano ballad. But when Dan and I started working on it, we juxtaposed the lyrics with these big drums and crazy tempo changes. So now it’s like a heartbreak song you can dance to.”
The accompanying music video was directed by Petra Collins, who previously directed the music videos for “brutal” and worked on the video for “good 4 u.”
Check out the new music video for “vampire” below.
GUTS can be pre-saved and pre-ordered on cassette, CD, or vinyl here. Exclusively available at Rodrigo’s online store, the vinyl version of GUTS will be offered in four colors: red, white, blue, and purple. In addition, an exclusive colored vinyl and CD (both with alternative cover and poster) are now available for pre-order at Target here.
Partly written at the legendary Electric Lady Studios in New York City, GUTS mostly came to life in Nigro’s garage studio in Los Angeles. Although each song intensifies the emotional honesty that’s always imbued her storytelling, the album ultimately finds Rodrigo expanding her expressive palette and uncovering entirely new dimensions of her artistry.
“When I was making ‘SOUR’ I was so new to the process and also so heartbroken; I’d just sit at the piano for hours and feel overcome with things I needed to express,” says Rodrigo. “But this album was much more about focusing on the craft of songwriting, which sometimes meant not taking myself so seriously and getting a little more tongue-in-cheek with my lyrics. We experimented so much with different approaches to writing and ended up with something that’s much more rock-influenced than anything I’ve done before.”
