Wow, it’s been nearly nine months since Olivia Rodrigo dropped her chart topping single “Driver’s License”.  At this point in her career, her hit single that was released prior to the announcement of “Sour” has over 1 billion streams. The artist has received praise for her single and fans were beyond thrilled when she came out with “Déjà Vu” and “Good 4 U”, in addition to announcing that she was coming out with an album. 

Olivia Rodrigo fans were eager to finally listen to “Sour” when it was released, and the album was surrounded by attention. It had an emotional appeal to her audience, and people in committed relationships found solace in the album despite it being a breakup album. Olivia Rodrigo made sure that she wouldn’t be a one-hit-wonder like many people expected of the young singer-songwriter. 

One of Rodrigo’s songs in particular, “Good 4 U”, was met with a lot of commentaries, especially amongst the social media platform TikTok. 

Many older TikTokers came out with videos captioned saying, “me wondering why I like the song ‘good 4 u’ so much” and then the music cuts from “Good 4 U” to “Misery Business”. Obviously, there’s a correlation between“Good 4 U” and “Misery Business”. “Good 4 U” sounds nearly identical to the song by Paramore. Other TikToks have been released with people editing mashups to the two songs and them sounding nearly identical when put together. 

After about four months of “Good 4 U” being out, Olivia Rodrigo has finally given credit where credit is due to the songwriters from Paramore, Hayley Williams, and former member Josh Farro. Olivia Rodrigo is said to have given $2.4 million dollars in royalties between the two of them, the amount nearly being about how much she made. 

Not only has Olivia recently given credit to Hayley Williams and Josh Farro, but she has also given credit again to Taylor Swift on her song “Déjà Vu” in July.  Rodrigo actually admitted to getting inspired by Swift’s “Cruel Summer” for the bridge in “Déjà Vu” and Rodrigo also sampled from Swift’s song “New Year’s Day” in her song “1 step forward, 3 steps back”. However, she did give credits to Taylor Swift for “1 step forward, 3 steps back” during the original release of the album. 

Another one of Olivia’s hits, “Brutal”, was compared to Elvis Costello’s song “Pump it Up” (1978). Even though Rodrigo faced backlash for copying Costello’s song in addition to “Good 4 U”, Costello actually came out and said, “this is fine by me… it’s how rock & roll works… You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand-new toy.” 

Olivia Rodrigo also faced criticism for the pictures that she posted for her “Sour Prom”. When Rodrigo posted for her “Sour Prom”, Courtney Love commented on how she believes Olivia Rodrigo is stealing ideas from her. She was especially upset since she feels as though Olivia Rodrigo entirely took over Love’s image in that particular photo and how the photo had absolutely nothing to do with Love. She also made a comment that in order to have an original idea, you actually have to live life first. 

Olivia Rodrigo has received a lot of negative and positive feedback in her short but successful career. Fans are eagerly awaiting an announcement that could mean another album, but will her album be “original” or will be it something completely new? We’ll have to find out soon!