“Bloodsucker! Famefucker! Bleeding me dry like a goddamn vampire.” Olivia Rodrigo’s much-anticipated new single “vampire” is here, and it’s one hell of a return.
From the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter’s upcoming second album, Guts, the song was written with SOUR producer Daniel Nigro and calls out an unnamed person from her private life as the bloodsucker in question. In the video directed by Petra Collins, who helmed the “Good 4 U” music video(opens in a new tab), Rodrigo performs the slow-burn, enraged ballad on a stage, only to be hit by a falling light and covered in her own blood as the audience simply watches.
“Writing this song helped me sort through lots of feelings of regret, anger, and heartache,” Rodrigo wrote on Twitter(opens in a new tab). “It’s one of my favorite songs on the album and it felt very cathartic to finish. im so happy it’s in your hands now and I hope it helps u deal with any bloodsuckers in your life.”
Having dropped at midnight ET on Friday, the “vampire” video is already the number one trending video on YouTube with 3 million views and counting.
As the Guardian’s Laura Snapes writes(opens in a new tab), “It’s as laden with words as a Gilmore Girls script, delivered with a spit and a stomp at truly exhilarating, breakneck pace that ends in a furious, battered exorcism: imagine if Tidal-era Fiona Apple was performing a Dear John on a piano being towed by a runaway truck and you’re somewhere close.”
Rodrigo’s no stranger to cinematic music videos going viral. In 2021, the official year of Olivias, her debut album, SOUR, which we bloody loved, was released with a triumphant, meandering concert film directed by Kimberly Stuckwisch and Toby L clocked up almost 70 million views across its individual videos on YouTube.
Guts is out Sept. 8 via Geffen.
