On “drop dead,” Olivia Rodrigo Is Head Over Heels and Hooked on The Cure: Review

Olivia Rodrigo proudly wears her influences on her sleeve. It’s clear in the first verse of her new song “drop dead,” where she name-drops her good pal Robert Smith of The Cure, slyly singing over a buoyant new wave synth, “You know all the words to ‘Just Like Heaven’/ And I know why he wrote them now that you’re standing right here.” With OR3, we’ve made it across the pond; if SOUR was her high school heartbreak album and GUTS was her messy, illuminating college project, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is her ‘I studied abroad and fell in love’ LP.

The nod to The Cure is just the tip of the iceberg on “drop dead,” which finds Rodrigo as giddy and love-drunk as ever. The second verse feels like a direct play on Wolf Alice’s “Don’t Delete the Kisses” — now a British standard, if not a particularly massive song in the US — with an intimate, spoken-word cadence and the kind of rosy-eyed reflections that come with being head over heels. Then there are the song’s thick harmonies, which rise with such passion during the chorus that it feels like a nod to, yes, Queen.

But beyond her influences, where does Rodrigo’s own authentic voice emerge from the fray? Well, for one, she has never lost her signature flair for the dramatic in her lyrics. “The most alive I’ve ever been/ But kiss me and I might drop dead” is a great all-or-nothing line, placing the listener at the crux of her emotional crisis. It’s that moment of romance that you want to last forever, but at the same time, it’s so tense and vulnerable that you just might die. Maybe the frequent hyperbole is just a feature of Rodrigo’s generation, but as songs like “vampire,” “love is embarrassing,” and “good 4 u” have shown, Rodrigo’s theater kid-adjacent delivery makes clear that the melodrama isn’t a pose — it’s the whole point.

“drop dead” certainly brings that rush of blood, though there’s a strange effect in the production; maybe it’s the roomier atmosphere, the high harmonies, or the energetic vocal delivery, but this is the first Olivia Rodrigo song where it sounded very obviously co-written and produced by Dan Nigro, who has helmed some similar sonics with their mutual friend Chappell Roan. It seems that Nigro himself is starting to find a very specific style that he’s begun to replicate with the newest pop class, one unapologetically influenced by ’80s alternative rock and new wave, and featuring stacked vocals and a good helping of reverb. It all sounds good, but it’s worth wondering what Rodrigo might sound like if she pushed further out of her and Nigro’s respective comfort zones.

Still, on “drop dead,” Rodrigo is in love, and that chorus is a gem of a melody, hanging around one beaming note and tossing and turning before arriving back on the root. It’s also another O-Rod song with a badass guitar solo, a choice that’s easy to celebrate given the magnitude of Rodrigo’s emotions. For all its borrowed blueprints, “drop dead” works because Rodrigo commits to the feeling completely; no matter the era or producer, that’s always been her biggest strength.