Olivia Rodrigo has just released her wonderful new album Guts, a triumphant follow-up to her 2021 Grammy-winning breakthrough Sour, and all anyone can talk about is which songs are about Taylor Swift. Why, and how did we get here?

Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts is such a good album.
It is. Raw, compelling, vibrant and fun, it kind of sucks that everyone just wants to discuss it in terms of the whole Olivia-Taylor situation.

Totally. Wait… what is the “whole Olivia-Taylor situation”?
Are you seriously gonna make me do this? I’ll look like such a hypocrite. Ugh, fine. This is a very long and tedious story, so imagine I’m wearing Olivia and Taylor hand puppets while I narrate this.

Sure.
It was early January 2021. Olivia Rodrigo’s mᴀssive breakthrough anthem Drivers License was conquering the globe. “She’s, like, the next Taylor Swift,” said the world and its music critics. “Thanks, world! That’s a great compliment because I am the biggest Swiftie in the world and the only reason I exist is because Taylor Swift is mother,” replied Olivia Rodrigo.

She said that?
More or less, I don’t know how teenagers talk. In any case, it was a mutual admiration society: when Drivers License charted at number three on iTunes, just behind a Swift double, Rodrigo Instagrammed her delight and Swift responded with a comment saying, “That’s my baby and I’m proud.” They met in person at the Brit Awards in May 2021 and took lovely pH๏τos together.

Aww.
Then that same month Olivia’s debut album Sour came out, and everything changed.

That’s a very sudden plot twist.
Upon the album’s release, Rodrigo’s song 1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back featured a songwriting credit for Swift because it included an interpolation of Swift’s track New Year’s Day, a sort of nod from Rodrigo to her hero’s influence. But weeks later, fans noticed that Swift had also been retroactively credited on Rodrigo’s Deja Vu for its supposed resemblance to Swift’s Cruel Summer, while Rodrigo’s Good 4 U also received a retroactive songwriting credit for Hayley Williams and Josh Farro of Paramore because it sounded a lot like the pop-punk band’s Misery Business.

I can’t deal with people who act like they invented music.
That’s what Elvis Costello said! Billboard later reported that Rodrigo had “given up millions in publishing royalties” due to the retroactive interpolation credits.