I received the following question a few weeks ago.
“Hey! I love your website. Do you think you could write about relationship OCD/relationship anxiety? Olivia Rodrigo’s new album could be an interesting listen as it seems to me to show a lot of obsessive/anxious thoughts about relationships”
So I thought it was high time that I dusted off the Sex and Relationship Education Guides To … format for ‘you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’. These guides that I do are like if I were your cool (old) Sex Ed teacher and we were going to do a lesson about it. I’m not going to diagnose Olivia, or the album, but just try to give you some interesting ideas to think about.
The whole album is apparently about the beginning, middle, and the end of a relationship. So I’m going to go through some of the key tracks, pick out some lyrics, and ask you some questions. I’m also going to fan boy about The Cure, because I had no idea that she was such a fan and there are many Cure references throughout.
drop dead
The first song on the album is ‘drop dead’, which seems to be about how the singer and an unnamed boy meet. I’m not gossiping about who this is, although I know other people do. This is about the story in the songs, not what actually may have happened to Olivia, because I don’t think that’s our business. In fact, it might not be about Olivia Rodrigo, she could have written the song from someone else’s perspective. She sings ‘I’ but it could be someone else’s ‘I’.
Anyway, they meet in a bar and she’s already been finding out information about him online before they meet. When they do meet it’s as though she’s already pictured it, pressed up against each other waiting to go to the toilet (to wee I assume). What difference does it make that she’s been imaginging this happening and that it is now actually happening? If it was the other way around, that they met and then she found out about him online, what difference would that make?
Is this good?
The song is really upbeat and it sounds like she’s having a great time. Or is she? She talks about feeling like she’s about to be sick and that she’s been punched in the stomach. Are we to understand that this is a good feeling? Why is that? What is the underlying story here?
Carrying on with this theme, the chorus ends with these lines. “The most alive I’ve ever been / but kiss me and I might drop dead.” Is this that kissing this boy might lead to so much excitement that she has a heart attack and dies? Or that her head might explode or something? Why is being alive and being dead brought together in this way do you think?
Perhaps there is a clue in the song ‘Just Like Heaven’ by The Cure? (I also know all the words to it). Where alive and dead, love and loss are brought together in a similar way. Jeanette Winterson wrote ‘why is the measure of love loss?’ in her (excellent) book Written On The Body? Why indeed?
Also, why Versailles? The video was filmed there (I think). Look up the Palace of Versailles and consider the history of this. What does Versailles represent? Is Olivia foreshadowing something? (I’ve been. It’s hideous.)
stupid song
Before we go on, what do you think about the songs and the album title being in lower case? At this point look up the author and scholar bell hooks and while you’re at it see if you library has a copy of All About Love. You should read it.
This one line that struck me. “They say that honest love is a cage that makes you feel free.” One of the things I say that in everything we do (our relationship with ourselves and others) we should aim to ‘feel both free and gently held’. How would you describe it?
Listening to the song (it’s a banger), how would you describe the feelings she’s having? A crush? Infatuation? In love? You might want to have a read of this article of mine about crushes and see what you think.
Roland Barthes, French philosopher, talks about this ‘falling in love’ as ‘enamoration’. That as soon as we feel this love for an object (someone else, or a thing) we have to follow it wherever we can because we won’t feel complete without it. Going back to the ‘alive / dead’ thing, how does this sound now?
Barthes also says that the moment of falling in love also happens in a scene. We fall in love with an object in a shop in a beautiful shopping arcade. Or someone who meets the beauty standard on an app. Or meeting someone in a bar exactly how we imagine it. (I got this from Alfie Bown’s book ‘Dream Lovers’). What if we change the scene? Maybe we could listen more to what we need (expectations)and then we might not fall in love with the story of falling in love?
maggots for brains
This track is about what happens when the boy (the object) goes out of town. Here’s the excellent chorus.
“I’m a zombie in my body, I’m a train off of the track
I feel dirty, I feel rotten, and the colors are all flat
I’m a sad shell of a woman and I’ve got maggots for brains
But that’s just the thing that happens when my
When my baby goes away”
Now apparently this is inspired by Miranda in Sex and the City when her and her boyfriend Steve broke up. (They got back together. Honestly, he was just a guy. Sorry Steve). I’ll tell you this, if Miranda sung this song to her pals, they would not have stood for this.
Let’s say a loved one of yours said this to you about some new person they were seeing. How would you feel about that? What might you say to them? Here’s an article about putting mates before dates…..
If you like the guitar in this you might like the track Age of Consent by New Order. In fact the whole album (Power, Corruption and Lies) is really good.
u + me = <3
In this song, it turns out that she does have friends who give her excellent advice.
“And all of my girlfriends roll their eyes
And tell me to take it slow this time”
Here’s some advice from me about this in one of my daft Talk For A Minute videos. I’ve got zero clout on Instagram, so please go and follow me!
purple
In this one the singer, or the protagonist, or ‘the subject’, is singing about Venn Diagrams. I’ve written about Relationship Venn Diagrams! In mine the overlapping circles turn green, not purple. What do you think? Are you in a relationship? How would you want it to look? What happens if you just become one purple or green circle?
It’s almost like Olivia Rodrigo is a fan of BISH! If you are Olivia can you please chip in like £1 a month to the Patreon. Thank you!
the cure
This song is about the subject having some of the really difficult feelings that might be associated with anxiety or overthinking in a relationship. She is in a relationship but is thinking a lot about other women, both past and present. In fact one of her techniques for trying to not feel anxious was to think about women that he has had sex with before: the cure. What was she hoping that this would do?
It might be useful to go back to the beginning of the album: alive and dead. When relationships and love feel this big then it’s like having a precious object in your hand. If you hold it too loosely you might drop it, if you hold it too tightly you might break it, or it might slip out of your hand. Imagine how anxious or worried that would make you feel. How can we hold onto ourselves and others in ways where we feel gently held and free?
What could you do in this situation that might really help you? What would be a useful cure? Who else is there? If she were able to take it slow (as her friends suggested), what difference might that have made?
Here are some resources for you to have a look through to help you figure this one out.
How to make relationship chats easier.
begged
In ‘begged’, the relationship seems to have got to a point where the subject is begging the object for affection and security. She’s clearly struggling. We don’t know about their arrangement, what they have agreed to? Are they boyfriend and girlfriend? Are they exclusive? Could (or perhaps should) they have negotiated their relationship, like I’ve suggested in this resource?
We don’t get to hear how the object is doing. How is he feeling? How would it feel to hear that she thinks this?
“And my endless well of needs
I’m an anchor in the ocean
You know I could never leave”
Or
“And I have this thought when I lay in bed at night
That I feel trapped inside my life”.
In what ways might we be responsible for partner’s feeling this way? Actually, that’s the first time I’ve used the word ‘partner’. Partner’s aren’t something we have, objects we own, but they are something we form: partnerships.
what’s wrong with me
Okay in this song we’re starting to get to the bottom of things.
“Oh, I’m not feeling like myself
All amber lights and warning bells.”
Amber lights and warning bells are signs that a relationship isn’t in a great place. This resource can help you work this out for yourself if you are in a similar situation. How’s your relationship – the relationship graph.
“Say I’m in love, so it’s hard to admit
I can’t eat, I can’t sleep
I think you’re what’s wrong with me.”
Her doctor said she was fine, but perhaps if you feel some of the symptoms that she was reporting you might find this resource from Young Minds helpful about Anxiety.
One of the lovely things about this song is that it has Robert Smith in it, WHOM I LOVE. He is the singer in The Cure and wrote the song Just Like Heaven, which was in the first verse of the song. Robert Smith is a massive wife guy and he’s written some beautiful and also terrifying music. For me, it’s like he shows up to say ‘yes I write all these songs about love, death, and existentialism, but you should dump this guy.’
Here’s a wonderful and terrifying song by The Cure
expectations
We’re post relationship now and the singer is dating again, but perhaps taking it a bit slower and maybe treating herself with a bit more love, a bit more consent. Being both free and gently held. There’s also some wisdom.
“Past mistakes are just new information.”
Of course, we all learn about how to do relationships from doing relationships, but what a shame that we have to put ourselves through these really painful and difficult feelings in the process. I bet you have had pretty much zero relationships education at school – bad sex ed bingo. A relationships education might not prevent us from making mistakes, but it might prevent us from making as many as we do.
This is reflected in the last song, ‘cigarette smoke’, which is coming to terms with a big ex where the ‘memories go dark’. Instead of regretting past mistakes, how can we use our experiences to resource us? How can we learn to love in ways that feel good for us in ways that enrich us and the people around us? In order to really learn how to love, we have to stop doing the ‘should stories’ of love: the ones in pop songs and rom coms. Let’s maybe fall out of love with falling in love? Instead we have to carefully figure things out for ourselves with love for ourselves and everyone around us.
© Justin Hancock, 2026 Find out more about me and BISH here. If you’re an educator, head to my website BISH training, to find out about my resources for SRE and training for practitioners. This website is funded by me (and I am not rich) and my supporters, please see how you can Support BISH here.
BISH is run by me, Justin Hancock. I’ve been a trained sex and relationships educator since 1999. I am proud to be a partner of the Sex Education Forum and I am proud to be a member of the World Association for Sexual Health. As well as BISH I also have resources, a podcast, and a coaching service for over 18s, as well as some of the best RSE / CSE teaching resources around. Find out out about my other work at justinhancock.co.uk. My work has featured (positively) in the media, like the BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, The Guardian, Sky One, and Novara Media.
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