The Olivia Rodrigo–Taylor Swift “Beef” Is Really About Something Deeper

I’m not sure how it became a trope to call second albums “sophomore.” But if Olivia Rodrigo’s debut, Sour, hadn’t become one of the biggest releases of 2021, winning her a Grammy for best new artist and putting the kibosh on her post–high school plans, the 20-year-old might be a literal sophomore now. On the song’s outro, she squeezes in a last pair of comic examples of her purported gaucheness—“Thought your mom was your wife, ah-ah/ Called you the wrong name twice, ah-ah”—before throwing up her hands in mock exasperation, “Can’t think of a third line/ La-la-la-la-la-la.” In real life—or at least in Rodrigo’s extensively media-trained presentation of it in interviews and profiles—the California-bred star betrays no lack of social graces. The seeds of the spoken-sung conversational vocals Rodrigo frequently uses here come from many places, including Swift, but at their most sardonic, as on “Bad Idea,” they feel an awful lot like last year’s breakout post-punk U.K. band Wet Leg. That seemed to chill after Sour came out and Swift apparently demanded credit for Rodrigo’s single “Deja Vu,” whose shouted bridge was inspired in style by Swift’s “Cruel Summer.” It seems utterly plausible Swift’s team would be petty and avaricious and that Rodrigo would feel betrayed and undermined.