Olivia Rodrigo, she of Sour, “Driver’s License” and arguably the biggest new pop star in the world fame, has reckoned with lots of shit since she became incredibly famous about eight months ago. There’s the prying rumours about the source material for her songs (that boy from High School Musical: The Musical: The Series), the accusations of overly-familiar musical similarities, and, of course, swirling rumours of a beef fuelled by none other than Hole frontwoman Courtney Love. Well, it looks like that beef may have been quashed quite easily from Olivia’s side with just a single sentence.
In a new profile for GQ, Olivia — who appears on the cover of their September issue — was asked about the allegations of plagiarism made by Courtney Love tied to the marketing for her Sour Prom event.
For context, Courtney argued that one image in particular — of Olivia in a prom dress, clutching flowers and wearing a crown as she cries, dark mascara running down her face — is a bit too close to the cover of Hole’s Live Through This, which has, arguably, a very similar aesthetic.
At the end of June, Courtney posted a side-by-side of the two images on a now-deleted Instagram post with the caption “Spot the difference #twinning”, expanding upon her thoughts further on Facebook. “Stealing an original idea and not asking permission is rude,” she wrote. “There’s no way to be elegant about it. I’m not angry. It happens all the time to me. But this was bad form.”
Seemingly oblivious to the fact that Courtney wasn’t happy with the development, Olivia commented on her Instagram post: “love u and live through this sooooo much”, deflecting the beef entirely by simply being nice. Very much me when I’m trying to avoid conflict in social situations.
But surely she must be sort of upset about it, no? In the GQ profile, writer Gabriella Paiella asked her about it further. She responded, quite simply: “To be honest, I’m just flattered that Courtney Love knows that I exist”, with Gabriella noting it was said with a smile.
At this point, Olivia has clearly learned how to deflect the sticky questions with a real grace (she responds equally gracefully to a question about her ex, Joshua Bassett, and his sexuality). But we also can’t help but feel that this might genuinely be how she feels about the whole situation. Do you ever wonder how you’d respond if you found out one of your idols had an issue with you? Personally, we’d probably pull a card similar to the one Olivia did: thank them for existing, and for knowing we exist.