From NME:
Olivia Rodrigo didn’t play ‘Drop Dead’ for Robert Smith, despite referencing The Cure icon: “I played him a bunch of other songs”
In the song, she sings: “You know all the words to ‘Just Like Heaven’ / And I know why he wrote them now that you’re standing right here”
By Max Pilley
Olivia Rodrigo’s new song ‘Drop Dead’ might reference The Cure, but she has revealed she failed to play it to Robert Smith when she had the chance.
The song is the lead single from her upcoming third studio album ‘You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love’, which is set to arrive via Geffen on June 12.
It sees Rodrigo singing the line, “You know all the words to ‘Just Like Heaven’ / And I know why he wrote them now that you’re standing right here”, and while Rodrigo and Smith have struck up a friendship over the last year, the namedrop of his classic song might have come as a surprise to him.
Rodrigo welcomed Smith onto the stage with her during her Glastonbury 2025 headline set, where they played ‘Just Like Heaven’, as well as ‘Friday I’m In Love’, and since then Smith has spoken about enjoying “a couple of memorable nights in the studio” with Rodrigo, but while Rodrigo did share some of her new songs with Smith ahead of their release, ‘Drop Dead’ was not one of them.
In a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Rodrigo said: “Oh my god I actually don’t know if I played it for him, he might hear it today. I played him a bunch of other songs on the album, I don’t know why I didn’t think to play this one for him though I should.”
During the Glastonbury set, Rodrigo wore a t-shirt that read, “You know all the words to ‘Just Like Heaven’” in anticipation of the song’s release, and she revealed in the interview that Smith “took a Sharpie” and wrote at the bottom of the t-shirt, “Or do you?”.
“And I was like oh my god, like he graffitied on this shirt,” she recalled. “There’s a hundred thousand people out there, am I going to go out in this shirt that like has this thing on it? And I was like kind of freaking out and I was like whatever, I’m just going to put it on and honestly it’s like my favourite outfit I’ve ever worn. I’m so happy that he wrote in Sharpie on it and now it’s one of my most prized possessions.”
Rodrigo gave ‘Drop Dead’ its live debut last night (April 18) during her surprise appearance in the middle of Addison Rae’s set at Coachella, having only released it for the first time a day earlier.
The song’s video sees Rodrigo taking over Versailles in Paris, dancing around the halls with her headphones on and shredding an electric guitar. “You lookin’ like an angel on the walls of Versailles,” she sings. “The most alive I’ve ever been.”
On Instagram, Rodrigo wrote, “I love this song so much!!! It’s the first chapter in the story of ‘you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’ and it makes me wanna skip around and roll the windows down and make out!”
Smith opened up about his relationship with Rodrigo last month, revealing that he became a fan after hearing her breakout single ‘Drivers License’, and went on to buy both ‘Sour’ and ‘Guts’.
“Although most of the songs on those two albums are not really ‘aimed at my demographic’, they are all so good that it is hard not to fall in love with them,” Smith said.
Rodrigo has since said she has been “diving deeper into The Cure’s discography”, and her Glastonbury duets with Smith were released as part of her ‘Live From Glastonbury 2025’ album.
During a conversation with NME in 2021, Rodrigo said both her mother and father were “music heads” and had encouraged their daughter’s artistic endeavours from an early age.
“I love pop-punk music; I love grunge music; I love country music and folk music,” she explained at the time. “I think, honestly, you can see little influences of all of those genres in my [debut] album [‘Sour’].”
