Rodrigo is now 20 and Guts, due out in September, will be her sophomore album. And while “Drivers License” and its aftermath were tabloid fodder, the public narrative wasn’t built into the song itself.
“Vampire” changes that. Rodrigo’s target here is someone trying to be glamorous, or glamorous itself. “Look, cool man, I get it/Sometimes I see parties and diamonds when I close my eyes/Six months of torture you sold as forbidden” Paradise. “
Perhaps the song is about Los Angeles nightlife regular Zach Beer, who is rumored to be Rodrigo’s partner – which might point to a structural shift from part one to part two. No—then music became coffeehouse EDM, a career as a producer and DJ that might be a veiled allusion to Beer’s newness, and, in “Dear John,” Meyer’s blues-pop Swift. The echo of is included.
Rodrigo has learned that the relationship itself is also a transaction. “The way you sold me for parts/For you to feed me,” she grunts, giving her ex the most ruthless nickname imaginable. “fame” [expletive]That insult usually begins with “star” rather than “fame,” but Rodrigo notes that the condition of fame is far more toxic than any human being, and that those who crave it are probably not interested in personality at all. I know not.
In “Driver’s License,” Rodrigo still viewed his female opponents as enemies or sources of tension, but in “Vampire,” he understood what the line of loyalty really was, and was inspired by a new feminist trend. is shown. Here she finds her ex-lover’s kinship with her other partners, and she lashes out at herself for thinking she was the exception. She said they were crazy too. “
