Olivia Rodrigo going from superfan to friend and collaborator of Robert Smith has been one of the more heartwarming musical relationship stories of the past couple of years, but The Cure frontman does have one bone to pick with the young superstar.
It relates to the fact that, as of earlier this year, Rodrigo went so far as to release a song called The Cure, though not one that has anything to do with the band. This became a big hit, which means there could have been a knock-on effect for Smith.
Quoted in The Hollywood Reporter in an interview with Rodrigo, Smith says: “I was like, ‘Oh thanks, every Google search from now on is going to come up with that.’”
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He’s joking, of course, but, just for the record, we think Smith can rest relatively easily. Our extensive research indicates that typing ‘The Cure’ into Google still brings up his band rather than Rodrigo’s song as the top result.
Elsewhere in the interview, Smith praises Rodrigo’s commitment to her craft: “Olivia’s desire to be recognized as a songwriter is very refreshing; it’s unmodern in a way,” he says. “It’s not effortless – she spends an awful lot of time getting things right with her music, but she also gets it right so quickly.
“It’s bizarre at times. She was in London with me a while back. She played me something she wrote that morning, things that could take 14 years for many writers to get out, and she does it in a morning.”
After guesting during Rodrigo’s headline set at Glastonbury in 2025, Smith went on to appear on a song, What’s Wrong With Me, on her latest album, You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love. One collaborator that Rodrigo won’t be working with any time soon, though, is AI.
“I would never use AI in any of my music,” she says in the Hollywood Reporter profile. “Absolutely no. Hard line on that. The closest I’d ever got is that once, me and [producer] Dan [Nigro] were like, ‘God, I wonder what ideas ChatGPT would have for an Olivia Rodrigo title,’ and they’re all fucking awful.”
Rodrigo also reflects on the success of her female-led Daisy Chain Fields festival, but says that one of her plans didn’t come to fruition. A huge White Stripes fan, she recently purchased the dress that Meg White wore on the cover of their Elephant album and hoped to wear it herself on stage, but couldn’t because it was “too fucking hot.”
“Maybe if I do Daisy Chain in the winter, I can wear it,” she suggests.
