Olivia Rodrigo - The Cure

0:00You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirway. Thanks so much to Gusto for sponsoring today's episode. Song Exploder is a very small operation, so I have a lot of responsibilities. In addition to actually making the show, part of my job is to handle the tedious admin stuff that I guess an HR department would normally take care of, like payroll and hiring and onboarding. These are not the things that I was dreaming of when I started the podcast. That's where Gusto comes in. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses.

0:39It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. There are options for nearly every budget, and it's super easy to make the switch. You can just transfer over your existing data and get started with your first payroll fast. Try Gusto today at gusto.com slash song exploder and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash song exploder. Once more, that's gusto.com slash song exploder. This episode is brought to you by booking.com. I've been to a few national parks over the years, and it's always been a pretty magical experience.

1:21I've been to Yosemite and Joshua Tree here in California. Those are some of the closest ones to me. But I've been wondering about taking a trip to one that's maybe not so close. And last year, I started looking at some lists ranking some of the most beautiful national parks. And one that's come up on a few of the lists is Glacier National Park in Montana. Okay, that's the first part of the daydream sorted. The next is, where am I going to stay? So I went on booking.com to look at some options. And they have all kinds of different places to stay. I found a little cottage that looks incredible. It has a mountain view.

1:55It has a balcony. It has air conditioning. It has great reviews. I'm very excited about that idea. Or if I decide I want to bring my dogs with me, I can use the pet-friendly filter. And it turns out there are some really nice pet-friendly hotels on the site too. So go on, book that trip. It's easy. Booking.com. Booking.ya. This episode contains explicit language. Olivia Rodrigo is a Grammy-winning singer and songwriter. In June, 2026, she released her third album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. The day it came out, it broke streaming records on Spotify and Amazon Music, and it debuted at number one on the Billboard charts.

2:36I talked to Olivia here in my studio, and I also visited her longtime producer and co-writer, Dan Nigro, at his studio. Dan Nigro won the Grammy for Producer of the Year in 2025, in part for his work with Olivia Rodrigo. And for this episode, the two of them told me the story of making Olivia's song, The Cure, from the original voice memo to the final version. But my head is full of poison And my heart is full of doubt I got toxins in my bloodstream You tried hard to suck a lot And it feels like medication And it's good for me, I'm sure But it don't matter how your love feels anymore. It'll never be the cure.

3:30It'll never be the cure.

3:39My name's Olivia Rodrigo. And my name is Dan Nigro. We started working together, I think I must have been 16 or 17, which is crazy because I'm 23 now. So he's known me my entire adult life and, you know, lots of my teenage life. We've collaborated on every song that I've ever put out. Were there any kind of big picture concepts or intentions that you had before you started writing? I set out to write this album and I knew that I wanted to make it about romantic love in more of a positive sense. I think my last two records were heartbroken and angsty and all the feelings that you feel when you're a teenager.

4:15And I just sort of wanted to stretch a muscle and try to write love songs. And that's a hard thing to do as a songwriter. I think oftentimes writing a song about a happy in a relationship you are just come across as like braggy or weird or vapid. And so I kind of wanted to challenge myself to figure out what a love song meant to me and what it sounded like coming out of my mouth. And so we knew we wanted to do that. And I knew that I wanted to kind of twist it a little bit because I knew all of my favorite love songs were really sad, you know, like Love Song by The Cure, First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes, or Video Games by Lana Del Rey.

4:47These are all songs that are about quote unquote being happy and love, but they're kind of devastating. And that's what makes them stick with you and what pulls on your heartstrings so much. I think when you're in a relationship, like a mature sort of relationship, it's like so multifaceted and layered. And, you know, not every day is like, oh, Sunshine and Roses, I'm the happiest person in the world. It's like complex. And I don't know, I think that's a fun challenge as an artist to try to capture that complexity. Where do you think the story of writing this song first starts? I actually remember vividly being in my friend's Jeep.

5:24And I was sitting in the passenger seat and I was talking to him and I was just like, you know, I'm making this record and I'm in love and I love this person. And I'm just like so miserable so much of the time. I'm like very unhappy. And I was like, I don't know why I can't like, I just want to write love songs. And I remember him expressly telling me, he's like, you have to write about how you're actually feeling. You can't pretend to write a certain way. You can't write in the way that you think you're supposed to feel. You have to be honest with yourself. And that's what's great about music.

5:56And you just have to tap into that. It's a gift. And I was like, okay, sure. Could you tell me more about those simultaneous feelings of knowing that, oh, I'm in love with this person, but also I'm so unhappy. Was it because of being in love that you were unhappy? Like I'm so in love, I'm miserable. Or were these just two separate rivers running in parallel? I don't know. I mean, I think falling in love can really like hold a mirror to you and show you parts of yourself that maybe before were kind of dormant. And sometimes you're in love and it's not happy because there's something that's not working.

6:32And then that's why you're so sad. And so I remember kind of feeling emboldened after that conversation. I think a few days later I wrote the initial sort of first draft. I'm not great at guitar. I'm like still sort of in a permanent state of learning. But I was trying to play a chord and I played it wrong. I like messed up where my fingers were, but it actually just sounded cool. And I was like, oh, that's great. A wonderful thing about being a novice is sometimes you make a happy accident. so I started playing a chord progression that I liked.

7:09I was just sitting on my couch. It was like late at night and I was deep in album mode and when I'm writing I try to force myself to write a song every day even if I don't really feel like it and I think this was actually one of those times where I didn't feel like it.

7:33I thought I felt the end of this time Thought you could be the end of this time

7:49I wrote a chorus that's kind of bad, so I won't share it. Really? You don't want to share the bad chorus? No, it's like, it got a lot better, so I can't show you because then people are going to, I don't know, it'll haunt me. Can you describe the bad chorus? I think the lyrics were, I'm unraveling and you can't stitch me up. I thought I'd feel better when I finally fell in love. We scrapped that chorus, but kept the unraveled part. So that's the thing. People always ask me if I have any advice for people who are just starting out writing songs. And I always say, just don't be afraid to write the bad songs or the bad choruses or whatever, because there's always a little nugget that you take and make it into something good.

8:27And so I think you just really can't be precious with it. I am so not a perfectionist when it comes to music and writing. I just write and write and write. And I think that that's obviously the most joyful way to be, but also just the most productive. The next day after I wrote this, I brought it to Dan. And I was like, I think that there's something here. And he was like, oh yeah, there definitely is something here. She was really excited about it. And I was like, this is cool and it's dark. And it's not something that I've heard you talk about before. And so we spent the day sort of figuring out the chorus and the bridge.

8:56I was kind of following her lead. I could tell that she knew what she wanted to say. I remember driving to the studio and being on the freeway on-ramp and being like, oh, the song's called The Cure. That's the most distilled way to say this. It'll never be The Cure. I remember coming up with that on the way to the studio and then bringing Dan. I was like, this is my verse and it's going to be called The Cure. We found the chords to the chorus. And then she started kind of riffing on some stuff. I actually have the voice memo. Should I play it?

9:59Be the cure It will never be the cure Be the cure It's so funny, it's changed so much even since then, but I just remember feeling like we were in a really good flow state and we were really getting somewhere with the song. With The Cure, we recorded it so fast because I just wanted to quickly get the idea down. We made this whole record in Dan's tiny little studio that's so small. And it was really annoying because the air conditioner didn't work like half the time we were making the record. It was like summer and hot. But I love that little studio. We've made so many songs in there. And it just feels so homey.

10:41I struggle like trying to write a good song in a studio that's really grand and beautiful. I don't know. There's just something nice about feeling like you're just in a garage hanging out. I was sitting in my chair. She was sitting on the couch. and these two microphones that are up on my piano were there. And instead of like miking the guitar properly, I literally just stood on the piano bench and played the guitar into the two piano mics. And it was like a really like rough take. And then she recorded her vocals to my guitar. All the pretty girls in the foreground of my mind I thought I'd done enough, but they keep moving The first lyric is, all the pretty girls in the foreground of my mind, I thought I'd done enough, but they keep moving the line.

11:30I think it's a lyric that really hits home for me. I think women in general, and especially women in this industry, it just constantly feels like the goalposts for us are just always changing and nothing's enough. And it's this insatiable beast of achievement or beauty or whatever. and just in life, I think people benefit so much off of women feeling like they're not enough or they need to be doing more. And it's just so exhausting. She recorded the vocal and I was like, what would it sound like with a double vocal?

12:10She did it and we were like, oh, that's cool. That sounds interesting. All of her other records, the vocal is so intimately singular. Yeah, it just makes it feel intense and introspective. And there's no autotune, and there's no melodyning or anything. They're just her vocal tracks. They kind of rub a little bit in spaces that makes it feel unsettling. And I feel like as much as we have all the modern tools that we can make a vocal feel perfect, it felt imperfectly perfect. All the nights spent fighting bad thoughts in my room Feeling so alone, might as well be on the moon So I wanted to make sure we holistically kept it as raw as possible.

12:57I don't want to change a thing. But we recorded it so quickly the day that we recorded it that I never tuned my guitar. And so my guitar is actually like about 15 to 20 cents sharp. And so I ended up having to tune every other instrument to the guitar and the vocal because I didn't want to mess with it. When I played the piano, because the piano was actually in tune, I had to meld on the piano to be in tune with the guitar. I think the next thing I added to the song was the Juno bass. I wanted it to feel really intense. and I like the juxtaposition of something so organic against a synth. My head is full of poison and my heart is full of doubt.

13:54I got toxins in my bloodstream. You tried hard to suck them out. And it feels like medication and it's good for me, I'm sure. But it don't matter how your love feels. anymore. It'll never be the cure.

14:19It'll never be the cure.

14:25My head is full of poison and my heart is full of doubt. I've got toxins in my bloodstream. You tried hard to suck them out and it feels like medication. It's good for me, I'm sure, but it don't matter how your love feels anymore, it'll never be the cure. So Evo. I mean, it's brutal. It's brutal. The song is addressed to someone and the idea of saying that to someone, this is cool and all, but it's not enough to actually make me happy. Was the version of that conversation something you had actually already had in real life? Or was this you figuring out that feeling? I think it was me figuring out that feeling.

15:04And I honestly think, I think it can be applicable to a lot of things. Like I think it could be applicable to like your career or like having this friend or this house or whatever. Like, I don't know. I think that there's been something that I've been learning in my adult life. Like all these things that I thought like, oh, once I like hit this milestone, then I'll feel okay. I'll feel calm and I'll feel good about myself. And I think getting older is realizing that like no outside forces could ever make you feel totally happy and content. It's like totally an inside job. And it sounds kind of cliche, but it was like a really hard thing to learn.

15:34And I think life kind of teaches you that over and over if you don't really internalize it. I think I went into my first adult relationship sort of thinking like, oh, this is going to be a thing. I'm going to feel happy and feel great about myself. But I actually think like being in a relationship just really complicates all of the issues that you have with yourself. I think it brings them to the surface and sort of makes it a lot harder. And I think that that's why it's so important for people to like be in relationships. You know, it's just like the best therapy anyone could ever go through.

16:00You just know yourself so much and you figure out what you want and like where your, the cracks in your foundation are, you know, and yeah. More with Olivia Rodrigo after this. This episode is sponsored by Lisa. I recently made a huge upgrade to my sleeping situation by getting a Lisa mattress. Every Lisa mattress is tailored to how you sleep with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. So I started by taking the Lisa sleep quiz on their website to discover what would be the best mattress for my needs. And for me, it turned out to be the natural hybrid mattress. Once it arrived, I could feel the difference from the very first night that I slept on it.

16:42But still, it was really nice to have their 120 night sleep trial to make sure that it was perfect. Go to Lisa.com for 25 % off select mattresses. Plus get an extra$50 off with promo code Song Exploder, exclusive for Song Exploder listeners. That's l-e-e-s-a.com and the promo code Song Exploder for 25 % off select mattresses plus an extra$50 off. Support this show and let them know that we sent you in the survey after the checkout. That's lisa.com with the promo code Song Exploder. Today's episode is sponsored by the ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program. I just had an extremely stressful week last week dealing with my dog's health issues.

17:26The poor guy had to have a battery of tests to try and figure out what's going on with him. And let's be honest, vet bills can add up fast. ASPCA Pet Health Insurance has been around for almost 30 years and has covered over 1 million pets. To explore coverage, visit ASPCAPetInsurance.com slash SongExploder. That's ASPCAPetInsurance.com slash SongExploder. Again, that's ASPCAPetinsurance.com slash songexploder. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Limited.

18:07The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. Thanks so much to Wayfair for being a sponsor. Wayfair came up big for me the other day because one of my long-term dreams has been to replace all of the old school light switches in my house with smart switches. It's one of those upgrades that I thought, okay, someday I'm going to tackle this. Well, I've gotten rugs and home decor accessories from Wayfair, but actually they have a huge variety of products. And one day I was browsing on the site and I remembered this idea. So I searched for smart light switches and they had exactly what I needed.

18:44And then they were delivered really quickly. And now I'm that much closer to making my house my dream home. So transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5 % back on every purchase. Just head to wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

19:15This song is very tense. And the production is very tense. I build up the guitar really, really intensely going into verse two.

19:29I think everyone thinks when they hear it the first time that the drums are about to come in, but they don't.

19:46I love that lyric. It's a really harsh, sort of visceral line to say, and I think that's why I like it so much. I remember I was trying to write a wordy second verse, but couldn't come up with it, and at a certain point I was just like, what if it's just baby I'm unraveled, like over and over again? Sometimes less is more.

20:14I was sort of obsessed with the concept of unraveling and I loved the visual image that it conjured up. I loved the feeling of the word. Also, I just kind of had this image of falling in love and feeling like all of the artifices and all of these fronts that you put up kind of just had to fall down. And that felt like an unraveling to me. And all of these like really deep, raw parts of yourself being brought up in the unraveling was sort of one of the themes of the album. So, yeah, it means so much to me. And, yeah, I just love how it kind of grows and builds and builds until it kind of, like, reaches ahead.

20:47And I'm just kind of, like, screaming I'm unraveled at the very end. I'm unraveled. I'm unraveled. I'm unraveled. I'm unraveled. I'm unraveled. I'm unraveled. I'm unraveled.

21:08I'm unraveled. I'm on rap boat, I'm on rap boat. And being like, I don't know. Like, this is a lot. I don't know if I can do that. Like, this is crazy. And he's like, just trust me. And it's like turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the song. I'm on rap boat. I'm on rap boat. I'm on rap boat.

21:45We have an amazing friend, Paul Cartwright, who does all the strings on all of my albums, actually. And a lot of the string parts I recorded in MIDI first, like the chugging cellos are all MIDI. For some reason on this song, I really liked the way that the MIDI strings sounded. So I just kept them, and then Paul played along to the MIDI strings.

22:21I remember him sending me a demo of it with strings. It really felt so beautiful and dark. I think strings just sound like being in love. You know what I mean? But I remember for some reason we like, I remember listening to it and was like, I think I was in like a really bad mood. And I think I wasn't ready to like hear the subject matter of the song. It's very honest and raw. And it's like kind of hard to admit to yourself that this is how you're feeling. And he sent me a demo and he's like, this is great, isn't it? And I was like, yeah, it's okay. I don't really want to listen to it right now.