Olivia Rodrigo was on a winning streak with her 2021 hit single “Deja Vu.” A month after writing Rodrigo’s worldwide hit debut single, “Drivers License,” she and frequent collaborator Dan Nigro returned to the studio to write her next hit, “Deja Vu.” “The song was based on a line Rodrigo wrote on her phone that turned gold again. “It’s not necessarily a song with vocals, it has great lyrics,” Rodrigo shared with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about “Deja Vu.” It’s really all about the music, and the feelings come from the music, not necessarily from the lyrics.”
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The meaning of the song
The authors of the hit initially worked on a sad song, but it didn’t turn out the way they hoped. That’s when Nigro asked what else she had to work on, and Rodrigo suggested a text that changed the course of the writing session. “I had it on my phone for a while: “When she’s with you, do you get déjà vu?” – recalls Rodrigo Low. “I’m kind of obsessed with the idea of déjà vu. I really like this concept (because) I get déjà vu all the time.”
Nigro also liked the concept and they both set about “creating this whole world” by writing about the mind-altering experience of seeing your ex-boyfriend living with someone else, but they do many of the same activities . She thinks it’s something special / But it’s all reused / It was our place, I found it first / I made those jokes you tell her when she’s with you / Do you get déjà vu when she’s with you? Rodrigo is crying on the bridge.
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“I thought it would be a cool play on words to use déjà vu as a metaphor for this very universal thing that happens when you break up with someone and they date someone else and you see them living the life you lived with someone else. – Rodrigo continued. “It’s just a super universal thing that I think happens to everyone that we just don’t talk about too much… I really like to paint pictures with songs, and so we tried to make the lyrics really strong.”
Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff and Annie Clark also receive credit as songwriters, as “Deja Vu” is an interpolation of Swift’s hit “Cruel Summer.” The bridge of Rodrigo’s song, where she screams the aforementioned words, is akin to the bridge of “Cruel Summer”, where Swift sings: Every night that summer to decide my fate / And I screamed at the top of my lungs / “I love you,” isn’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard? before shouting emo style: He looks up grinning like the devil.
“It’s one of my favorite songs,” Rodrigo said. rolling stone about “Cruel Summer”. “I love the screaming vocals in it, like the harmonized screams that (Swift) does, I think they’re very electric and moving, so I wanted to do something like that.”
The singer admitted to Lowe that “Deja Vu” took a lot of “trial and error” to get where she wanted, but her hard work paid off. “Deja Vu” charted around the world, peaking at number three on the charts. Billboard Hot 100, making the then 18-year-old artist the first artist to have her first two singles debut in the top 10 of the genre-wide chart.
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