Olivia Rodrigo: mis 10 esenciales

Hey GQ, I'm Olivia Rodrigo and these are my 10 essentials.

[light ambient music]

This isn't playing around.

This is like an industrial strength weighted blanket.

I think someone gave me one of these for Christmas one year.

Now I get everyone else this for Christmas

'cause it's like the best gift I've ever been given.

Some people hate it

some people say it feels like suffocating

but to me it's just the best type of suffocation.

I love it, every time I get

into a hotel bed I like get in and I'm like, Hmm

something's not right because I'm missing this.

And it's actually very cumbersome to travel with.

So I sometimes just have to do without it.

Like I don't know how you'd put this in a little carry-on.

[Olivia giggles]

I feel so safe right now.

[light ambient music]

This is very important.

This is my actual journal.

It's kind of scary to have it out in the open here.

I'm so terrified of losing my journals.

That's like my worst fear when I was kind of

having trouble overcoming lots

of the pressure of making a sophomore record.

I read The Artist's Way and one of the big tenets

of The Artist's Way is doing your morning pages.

So it's like three pages long hand stream of consciousness

in the morning, like first thing you do when you wake up.

I think for me it's just nice to be able to write something

down and not judge it in the moment.

I think that's the whole point

of doing the morning pages is just to be like

this is stream of consciousness what I'm feeling.

I'm not gonna judge it too harshly or wonder

if it's gonna make any money or be criticized or whatever.

There's think really lovely about that.

I feel like I've been pretty diligently keeping some sort

of journal or diary since I was like 13 years old.

And so I just have this like Rolodex of all of my feelings

for a long time and it's nice to kind of look back

at issues that I thought were gonna be world ending

and be like, Ah, that worked out totally fine.

It made me who I am.

It kind of just like puts things into perspective, you know?

[light ambient music]

So these are the guts rings.

Rings in general are a huge essential for me.

I don't go anywhere without these rings.

I feel very naked without them.

If I ever go on vacation or something

and get tan I have like weird tan lines

on my hands 'cause I refuse to take my rings off.

My producer's wife Emily actually made these.

She's an incredible jewelry designer.

I named the album Guts for many different reasons.

I love the word.

I think it has so many cool meanings.

It means intuition, it means courage.

Spilling your guts is just

like telling all your secrets to everyone

which I feel like is just very synonymous

with songwriting and it's just a cool four letter word.

I think it looks cool.

It's very like evocative.

I don't know, they all are kind of sentimental to me.

This one, my producer Dan got from me

for Christmas and he's one of my closest friends

and my parents got me this one for my 18th birthday

at some vintage door and I think it's really special.

This one, my makeup artist on high school musical

I was filming this show and I was really close with her

and she helped me through a lot

and she got me this ring when we wrapped

and it says Write the songs of your heart.

And on the inside it says Love Heidi and Dottie June

which is her dog.

Her little french bulldog,

actually left for the Grammys two years ago

and I forgot my rings at home and I had to freak out

and luckily someone was still home and I made them go

to my house and get the rings and bring them to me.

'Cause I was convinced that it was gonna be a terrible night

if I didn't have my rings.

It was some weird thing.

[light ambient music]

I was actually TikTok influenced into buying this.

There's like a subculture on TikTok that is just so obsessed

with the Stanley Cup and what you put

in it and the flavored waters and the soda concoctions.

And I was like, I need this.

This looks like it'll change my life.

And it completely did.

I've gotten actually so many of the people on my team

and so many of my friends on the Stanley Grind with me.

I did live in Utah for a while

and Utah is the land of like specialty craft sodas.

This is like what they put the sodas in.

So it's like diet coke and like coconut creamer

and like lemon juice and like all

of this fun stuff to like doctor up your sodas.

I'm into that.

I'm very into that.

It's really fun.

[light ambient music]

The next item is Skinny Pop.

I consume so much Skinny Pop.

I inhale it like oxygen.

It is just my favorite snack.

There's one open bag of Skinny Pop

on my piano at all times, on my desk at all times.

And then in the kitchen at all times open

like just ready for me to consume.

I truly lots of days will eat like this entire thing.

[bag crinkles]

Oh so good.

I will bring this into the movie theater

'cause it's so much better

than the movie theater popcorn to me.

I'll just sneak it into my bag.

Oh well let's see what other flavors they have.

Kettle corn.

I've never tried that.

Popcorn mini cakes.

Wow.

There's a whole skinny pop cinematic universe I need to try.

[light ambient music]

This is my favorite perfume.

It's the Baccarat Rouge 540.

So good.

I have a candle of it too that I burned in my house.

I never was super into perfume before.

I smelled this one and I'm like

This, this is the one for me

because I don't love like smelling like candy or

like flowers or something.

But this just smells like sort of like you could maybe

possibly just naturally smell this way if you're

like an angel or something and like doesn't smell

like any smell that I can place.

Lots of people say that like if they'll

like smell this scent and I'm like somewhere else

they'll think of me.

And that's a very high compliment.

[light ambient music]

This is my family.

And they are definitely one of my 10 essentials.

I need them for everything.

My mom and my dad.

I'm an only child and this is us

at Rockefeller Center during Christmas time last year.

Yeah, I love my family.

I wouldn't be anything without them.

I adore them.

Going to New York this time was a really fun time.

I really love traveling with my parents.

I think it's so fun to get to go new places with them.

And I saw the Barbie movie the other day

with my mom and I was like, wow.

It's a transcendent experience.

[light ambient music]

This is my favorite book.

I think it's the only book that I've read more than once.

It's like the creative person's bible.

I've made so many of my friends read it.

I like recommend it to everyone I know.

I just think it's so incredible.

It's all about like creativity and

and discipline and the anxieties that come

along with creativity and how to remedy those.

And it's just, it's amazing, Elizabeth, if you're out there

changed my life with this one.

It was so good.

I actually read this for the first time

while I was making Sour and I actually don't think

that the album would've turned out the way that it did.

Had I not read this book.

It was so instrumental in my creative journey.

[light ambient music]

I literally cannot leave the house without it

not being hyperbolic.

I go everywhere with this.

I took Acutane for the first time this year.

I had bad teenager skin and my lips were so dry

all the time.

And now I carry this with me everywhere I go

because it's just so chapstick.

Put it on anything.

Put it on wounds.

The opportunities are endless with Aquaphor.

I feel like all these items

I'm just doing commercials for these brands.

These are guitar picks that I love playing guitar.

I love writing songs on guitar.

I'm slowly getting better.

Took some lessons this year, know a few songs.

I learned how to play guitar.

Like a lot of it was just by myself.

Like learning songs I really love to play.

And when you're just learning how to play

you know like pop songs in your bedroom

you just kind of like do it intuitively

like with your fingertips.

But it always does sound better when you use a pick

but sometimes it's just you just go back

to what you did when you were 15.

My producer Dan

is always trying to get me to play with a pick

'cause he says it sounds better and I agree with him.

So I'm trying keeping these with me.

And I think I'm definitely better at piano.

I'm more comfortable playing it, which is why

I think sometimes it's nice to go outta your comfort zone

and play something

on an instrument you're not so familiar with.

So I've been playing a lot of guitar lately.

I wrote Love is Embarrassing on guitar.

The song Lacy was written on guitar.

There are a lot of guitar based songs on this album.

Nice, beautiful finger plucky guitar.

And there's also some like really driving hard

hitting more punky guitar.

So I gotta get my practice in before tour.

Thanks GQ.

These were my 10 essentials.

I hope you enjoyed.

Check out my new album Guts if you haven't already.

Bye.