Olivia Rodrigo - The Cure

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. I talked to Olivia Rodrigo here in my studio, and I also visited her long-time 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. 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. For more info, visit songexploder.net/olivia-rodrigo. https://songexploder.net/olivia-rodrigo

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You'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 Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18. I'm going to be performing solo at Roughtrade Records on Denmark Street. And I'm going to be in conversation about my music, moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carrie. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh 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 benefit software built for small businesses. It'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

• 1:38Hrishikesh Hirway?

  and get started with your first payroll fast. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/songexploder and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/songexploder. Once more, that's gusto.com/songexploder. This episode is sponsored by LinkedIn. Anyone who's ever had to spend money on marketing knows how tricky it can be to feel like you've spent that money wisely. Well, with LinkedIn Ads, you can be sure that you'll get a great return on your investment. You can target your campaigns by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads

• 2:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/songexploder. That's linkedin.com/songexploder. Terms and conditions apply. This episode contains explicit language.

• 2:38Hrishikesh Hirway?

  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. I 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.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  My name's Olivia Rodrigo.

• 4:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And my name is Dan Nigro.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  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 lots of my teenage life. We've collaborated on every song that I've ever put out.

• 4:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Were there any kind of big-picture concepts or intentions that you had before you started writing?

• 4:22Speaker 01

  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. And I just sort of wanted to stretch a muscle and try to write love songs. And it's a hard thing to do as a songwriter, I think. Oftentimes, writing a song about how happy and in a relationship you are just come across as 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.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  These are all songs that are about, quote unquote, "being happy in 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 so multifaceted and layered. And 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.

• 5:32Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Where do you think the story of writing this song first starts?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  I actually remember vividly being in my friend's Jeep. And 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 so miserable so much of the time. I'm very unhappy.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  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. Like, you have to be honest with yourself." And that's what's great about music. And you just have to tap into that. It's a gift. And I was like, "Okay, like, sure."

• 6:20Hrishikesh Hirway?

  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?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, I think falling in love can really 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. And then that's why you're so sad. And so I remember kind of feeling emboldened after that conversation. And I think a few days later, I wrote the initial first draft.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  I'm not great at guitar. I'm still sort of in a permanent state of learning. But I was trying to play a chord, and I played it wrong. I 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 make a happy accident. So I started playing a chord progression that I liked.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  I was just sitting on my couch. It was 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.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  When I wrote a chorus, it's kind of bad, so I won't share it.

• 8:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Really? You don't want to share the bad chorus?

• 8:12Speaker 01

  No, it's like, it got a lot better. So I can't show you because then people are gonna, I don't know, it'll haunt me. But...

• 8:19Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Can you describe the bad chorus?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  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. Like, people always ask me if I have any advice for people who are kind of just starting out writing songs. And I always say, like, 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. And 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."

• 9:04Hrishikesh Hirway?

  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."

• 9:10Speaker 01

  And so we spent the day figuring out the chorus and the bridge.

• 9:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I was kind of following her lead. Like, I could tell that she knew what she wanted to say.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  I remember driving to the studio and being on the freeway on ramp and being like, "Oh, the song's called 'The Cure.' Like, that's the most distilled way to say this. Like, 'It'll Never Be The Cure.'" I remember coming up with that on the way to the studio and then bringing it to Dan. I was like, "This is my verse, and it's going to be called 'The Cure.'"

• 9:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  We found the chords, the chorus. And then she started riffing on some stuff.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  I actually, I have the voice memo. Should I play it?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  With "The Cure," we recorded it so fast because I just wanted to quickly get the idea down.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  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. I 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.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  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.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  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." I don't know, I 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.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  She recorded the vocal and I was like, what would it sound like with a double vocal?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  She did it and we were like, oh, that's cool. That sounds interesting. All of her other records, the vocal is like so intimately singular.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just makes it feel intense and introspective.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  And there's no autotune and there's no like melodining or anything. Like 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 like we have all the modern tools that we can like make a vocal feel perfect, it felt imperfectly perfect.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  So I wanted to make sure we like holistically kept it as raw as possible. I 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.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  When I played the piano, because the piano was actually in tune, I had to melodine the piano to be in tune with the guitar.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  I think the next thing I added to the song was the Juno bass.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  I wanted it to feel really intense.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  And I like the juxtaposition of something so organic against a synth.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  My 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 evil.

• 14:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I mean, it's brutal.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  It's brutal.

• 15:01Hrishikesh Hirway?

  The song is addressed to someone and the idea of saying that to someone, this is cool and all, but it's not enough

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:09Hrishikesh Hirway?

  to actually make me happy.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Was a version of that conversation something you had actually already had in real life? Or was this you figuring out that feeling?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  I think it was me figuring out that feeling. And I honestly think, I think it could 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 this has 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 cliché, but it was like a really hard thing to learn. And 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.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  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 it 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. You 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.

• 16:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

  More with Olivia Rodrigo after this.

• 16:34Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 17:17Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Again, it's L-E-E-S-A dot com. And the promo code is SONGEXPLOTER for 20% off select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. You can support Song Exploder and let them know that we sent you in the survey after checkout. Again, it's leesa.com and the promo code is SONGEXPLOTER.

• 17:37Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 18:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 19:09Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 19:28Speaker 01

  The song is very tense. And the production is very tense.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  I build up the guitar really, really intensely going into verse two.

• 19:41Speaker 02

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

• 19:58Speaker 01

  I 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, like 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.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  I was sort of obsessed with the, the concept of unraveling and I, 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 a head. And I'm just kind of like screaming, "I'm unraveled" at the very end.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  I remember Dan being like, "Hit that note." "I'm unraveled, I'm unraveled." 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.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  We have an amazing friend, Paul Cartwright, who does all of the strings on, on all of my albums, actually.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  And a lot of the string parts, I recorded in MIDI first. Like the, like the chugging cellos are all like 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.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  I remember him sending me a, a demo of it with strings. It really felt so beautiful and, 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." Like it was almost like too much for me to metabolize or something like that. And so Dan always makes fun of me for not liking the first draft.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  So you're kind of on the edge of your seat for a while until the drums come in. And that was done very intentionally.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  You got abstained from using the drums for so long that when they come in, it feels so important and it like really hits you.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  The drums are played by Sterling Laws, who's this incredible drummer. The fills that he plays, I feel really emotional. I like feel them in my chest when he plays them.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  One of the reasons why I love this song so much and, and why I love the production so much is it kind of feels like you really have to earn that payoff. You know what I mean? It, it doesn't give it to you right at the first chorus. You kind of have to keep listening. It like keeps you hopefully sort of engaged until like the drums come in and the strings come in. And it feels like this like soaring, huge payoff.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  I think that the song is a little bit of a question. I think it's not like, "Oh, well, I figured out the meaning of love in life and here it is." It's like, "Oh, why can't this ever be enough?" Which is the lyric. It's like, it's just genuinely asking, you know what I mean? And I think that it's a concept that I didn't have the like emotional intelligence maybe to understand when I was 19, like fair enough. But I think it took a lot of like growing and, and self-discovery and struggle, I think, to like make this song and come to the realizations that I came to while writing it.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  I think it's one of the most introspective songs I've ever written. Yeah, it means so much to me.

• 25:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now here's "The Cure" by Olivia Rodrigo in its entirety.

• 30:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  To learn more, visit songexploder.net. You'll find links to buy or stream "The Cure" and you can watch the music video.

• 30:49Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, Kathleen Smith, and Tiger Biscum. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows and support them yourself at radiotopia.fm. And if you'd like to hear more from me, you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you can also find on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.

• 31:42Speaker 03

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