Olivia Rodrigo has revealed that her breakup with actor Louis Partridge significantly influenced the final version of her upcoming album, You Look Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, prompting her to rewrite several songs before its release.
The Grammy-winning singer told the BBC that she revisited lyrics on multiple tracks after the relationship ended, transforming songs that were originally centred on longing and romance into reflections on heartbreak and emotional turmoil.
One of the most notable changes came in What’s Wrong With Me, a collaboration with Robert Smith of The Cure. Rodrigo said the song was initially written about missing someone intensely and feeling emotionally drained because of the distance.
However, following her split from Partridge, she altered the lyrics to suggest that the relationship itself had become the source of her unhappiness.
“I can’t eat, I can’t sleep / I think you’re what’s wrong with me,” Rodrigo sings on the track, which she recently performed during a surprise appearance at the Primavera Festival in Barcelona.
Olivia Rodrigo reworked multiple songs
Rodrigo also disclosed that another song on the album, Purple, underwent a major transformation during the creative process.
According to the singer, the track originally began as a straightforward love song with a sweet and optimistic tone. Months later, she and her collaborators revisited the song, changing its musical arrangement and rewriting parts of the lyrics to reflect a darker emotional direction.
“Initially, it was a love song, and it was very sweet and saccharine,” Rodrigo said. “A few months after we wrote it, we revisited it and put new chords underneath it and tweaked some of the lyrics.”
She described the song as a turning point on the album where the narrative begins to unravel.
Album chronicles relationship’s rise and fall
Rodrigo characterised You Look Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love as a deeply personal project documenting the evolution and eventual collapse of a romantic relationship.
“It’s a love story that falls apart,” she said, calling the album “a time capsule of a relationship and a few years of my life.”
Rodrigo and Louis Partridge were first linked in October 2023 after being spotted together at a Halloween party in London. The pair reportedly ended their relationship in December 2025.
The album is scheduled for release on June 12 and is expected to offer fans an intimate look at one of the most transformative periods in the singer’s personal life.
