Can Olivia Rodrigo’s collaborations can turn teenyboppers into indie kids?
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that rock music hasn’t had proper time on the charts all that often. The biggest names in pop music might still dominate the entire musical landscape, but Olivia Rodrigo may be one of the few people managing to bridge the gap between rock and roll and the teenybopper genre.
If people’s only exposure to Rodrigo is like ‘driver’s license’, it makes sense that they would get the wrong impression. Despite it being a standard pop ballad that wouldn’t feel out of place on the charts, she was already a songwriter well beyond her years in 2023, even managing to go past Disney-style censorship and slip in the word “fuck” into one of her biggest hits. The single was one thing, but fans were treated to something different when they got the album.
Despite the blatant cribbing from Elvis Costello’s ‘Pump It Up’, ‘brutal’ was the first inkling that she had something different. This was the modern version of a riot-grrl being born before our eyes, and since ‘Good 4 U’ found its way onto the hit parade, people were starting to take notice of the rock and roll chops she possessed. She may have had a smack on the wrist from Paramore’s lawyers, but it didn’t matter to the musicians who were listening to her music.
After all, Rodrigo wasn’t the same pop princess who always listened to the same music when she was a kid. Sure, there were people like Taylor Swift in regular rotation, but she readily admitted to being interested in her dad’s taste in music, gravitating towards everyone from Jane’s Addiction to The White Stripes to Alanis Morissette when she was growing up.
Looking at the people featured in her live shows, Rodrigo’s career moves are incredibly healthy for the rock world. Most casual fans might know who Weezer are when she brings them out onstage, but judging by her inclusion of Robert Smith during her Glastonbury performance or covering Fontaines DC, something has started to shift with the way she makes music.
It would be one thing for someone like Lady Gaga to do one-off collaborations with Metallica, but Rodrigo is helping turn the tide for what kids are listening to these days. There are always going to be fans who put their fingers in their ears when they hear something that they don’t like, but if hearing Rodrigo and Smith sing a song like ‘Friday I’m in Love’ live convinces a kid to pick up a copy of Disintegration, that’s hardly a bad thing.
In an era when some pop artists can start to sound homogenised, a lot of what makes this singer’s collaborations so interesting is that they are so left field. Music is always about drawing on emotion, and even if Rodrigo isn’t always making the most original music in the world, according to those album credits, it’s important to have artists that remind everyone where all that emotional music is coming from.
Will her collaborations be enough to turn teenyboppers into indie fans in one fell swoop? Probably not. But the fact that she is pushing for this conversation is at least a step in the right direction. Hell, no one in their right mind would have figured that one of the biggest names in all of music would be working with a band like The National, but if it’s good enough for Taylor Swift, maybe it’s time that the new school start following Rodrigo’s lead by collaborating with some more offbeat musical choices.
