Olivia Rodrigo Made a Fangirl Out of Me, an Adult Woman
I expect her new single will reflect her eerie ability to know exactly what I'm feeling, despite the decade between us.
EntertainmentMusic

I miss driving. It’s strange that someone who spent the better part of a decade kvetching about Los Angeles traffic and shoddy roads and brake-happy assholes might feel this way, but I do. I look for every opportunity to hop in the driver’s seat, scoot my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose, and crack the windows. Nothing compares to driving down the Pacific Coast Highway on a warm afternoon, but getting behind any wheel is enough to jog this memory: salted wind at my cheeks, an infinite horizon splitting the sky and sea, Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour cranked all the way up.
I never used to identify as an obsessive—the sort I associate with the fangirl communities surrounding BTS or the Free Britney movement—but something about the songwriter with her reformed Disney image changed my listening habits. She was just 18 when Sour debuted in 2021, yet it became the soundtrack of my and so many other young people’s lives—the forward motion in our melancholic drives on the freeway or our reflective walks down the West Side Highway. And by the end of month, we learned this week, there’ll be new Olivia Rodrigo music to cry (or shout) to called “Vampire.” With every earnest bone in my body, I’ll tell you that I cannot wait.