Olivia Rodrigo Says New Album Is About ‘Jealousy’ & ‘Longing’ She Felt in Her First ‘Big Girl’ Relationship

Olivia Rodrigo has been gutsy in relationships, and she’s had relationships go sour. But she’s never had one as serious as the relationship that inspired her new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love.

In an Audacy Check In interview posted Thursday (April 23), the pop star opened up about how third studio LP (due June 12) differs from 2021 debut album, Sour, and 2023 follow-up Guts, both of which topped the Billboard 200. “I think the challenge for me was to write songs about romantic love positively,” she offered.

“I think when I set out to write this album, I was really in love — sort of my first ‘big girl’ relationship,” she continued without naming her significant other. “Writing a song about happiness is a lot harder than writing a song about heartbreak … it was sort of challenging myself to make a love song and also talk about some of the more negative feelings that go along with being in romantic relationships, like longing and yearning and jealousy and missing your partner when they’re away.”

Rodrigo was last linked to actor Louis Partridge, with the pair first sparking dating rumors in fall 2023. Even before formally announcing You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, she was open in a March interview with British Vogue about how her next body of work would be full of “sad love songs.”

“I realized all my favorite romantic love songs were beautiful because they had a tinge of fear or yearning in them,” she told the publication at the time. “I felt a similar way about falling in love, that the second I’m in a really great relationship, I’m gonna start feeling good about myself, and this stuff is going to fall into place. But it just doesn’t work like that.”

Watch Rodrigo’s full interview with Audacy Check In above.