Olivia Rodrigo: Drop Dead review – the ultimate rush of infatuation that’s nothing more than a festive trinket | Olivia Rodrigo

IIs there anything better than a fresh pop lyric that’s so riveting you can’t believe 60 years of songwriters didn’t get there first? Or like that at least 20since googling a crush has become a completely normal element of modern romance: “One night I got bored in bed / And I stalked you on the Internet,” Olivia Rodrigo sings on her comeback single, a casual acknowledgment of her innate melody destined in turn to haunt listeners’ brains all summer long. Its perfect couplet heralds an ecstatic chorus about the abiding terror of getting exactly what you want, exactly the way you want it, and barely being able to breathe or stifle vomiting: “Most alive I’ve ever been / But kiss me and I might drop dead!”

Sharp, obsessive, harsh songs about romance, always marked by a self-awareness of their intensity – or a wink at how they call girls they love “crazy” – have become Rodrigo’s trademark. (She calls her benign form of cyberstalking “feminine intuition.”) Now 23, she broke out as a pop star in 2021, following her life as a Disney Channel star, and delivered one of the fastest, most effective and indelible redefinitions of any musician to emerge from this interconnected entertainment ecosystem. (Even her pop counterpart and fellow Disney star Sabrina Carpenter took five albums to achieve success on her terms.) Rodrigo’s first single, Driver’s License, was an epic, heartbreaking ballad, though the sticking points of her first album, Acid, were its pop punk. She translated that convincingly into her second album, 2023’s Guts, which drew on the influence of her mother’s recordings of the riots; She was mentored by St Vincent, brought in the Breeders to support her on tour and got The Cure’s Robert Smith to duet with her when she headlined Glastonbury in 2025.

“Drop Dead” contains an informal verse that nods to her friendship with Smith: “You know all the words to ‘Just Like Heaven,’” she sings dreamily, “and I know why she wrote it.” (In a recent Vogue cover story, Smith said the pair had been talking fashion and had hit the studio together.) But she’s not interested in continuing to hone her now-secured rock intentions. Early speculation of the song’s title assumed it was a sinister kiss-off to a piece containing Rodrigo’s Get Him Back! And Good 4 U — a logical conclusion after her first long-term relationship seemed to end around the new year. This is the kind of safe comeback that many pop stars use to ease fans into a new era: even Guts was driven by the relatively License-like Vampire before he showed his tougher hand. But Drop Dead is a real centerpiece: a glorious rush of romantic power that attempts to stop time to savor the moment, then dives into it again, almost turbulent with the unbridled momentum. In the video – filmed at the Palace of Versailles, directed by Petra Collins – Rodrigo can’t stop running, and is part Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, part Emma Corrin’s Diana as she skates through Buckingham Palace in The Crown.

If anything, Drop Dead sounds a bit like Chappell Roan, with whom Rodrigo shares a producer in Dan Nigro: a collection of strings so intense that they stop short of celebratory; Rodrigo idles in her highest register for the entire chorus, embodying anticipation. (Some of the melodic vocal bends are also undeniably Swiftian.) It’s so good it doesn’t really matter, and it comes with its own beguiling sense of collapse, hurtling toward the wreckage over wild whitewater drums and a powerpop guitar solo that shimmers like a skater sliding down the rails — but then unravels. There’s a sense that all this obsession leads to an ending that’s even messier and more disorienting than a clean death, which is every bit as soothing a fantasy as happily ever after.