Last week, Olivia Rodrigo released “Deja Vu,” her highly-anticipated follow up to her record-breaking debut single “Drivers License.” The song marks a buoyant shift for the songwriter, who’s previous track was a heartbreak anthem. But according to Rodrigo, a few fans are in for a surprise while listening to “Deja Vu” as the track features a hidden lyric.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Rodrigo broke down which part of the track the buried lyric can be heard:
“When I sing, ‘Saying I love you / In between the chorus and the verse.’ Only a couple people pick up on it, but I whisper ‘I love you’ in the track, it’s super buried. My A&R was probably listening to this song, poor guy, he’s probably listened to this song like 200 times because it went through so many mixes. He’s listened to it 200 times and never heard it, which I think is super cool. I don’t know if only certain people can hear it, but it’s really buried and very subtle.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Rodrigo talked about how her team had already chosen ‘Deja Vu’ to be her next single before ‘Drivers License’ was even released. “We chose this song to come out after ‘Drivers License’ probably in September. We chose it a long time before ‘Drivers License’ ever came out,” she said. “I didn’t ever have to chose the next single knowing ‘Drivers License’ was this huge success. So that definitely took a lot of pressure off.”
She continued: “Us and my team didn’t want to do the safe thing of putting out another heartbreak ballad. I think people probably would resonate with that, and they resonated with ‘Drivers License,’ but we really wanted to show that I’m a versatile songwriter and I’m a versatile artist and I can write heartbreak songs, but I can also make cool alternative pop songs. I just didn’t want to be pigeonholed [as a] heartbreak ballad girl. But ‘Drivers License’ did give me a lot of confidence in that regard.”
Listen to the hidden lyric in “Deja Vu” above, around the 2:10-minute mark.
