Olivia Rodrigo - The Cure

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway. Thanks so much to Gusto for sponsoring today's episode. Song Exploder is a very small operation, so I have a lot of responsibilities. In addition to actually making the show, part of my job is to handle the tedious admin stuff that I guess an HR department would normally take care of, like payroll and hiring and onboarding. These are not the things that I was dreaming of when I started the podcast. That's where Gusto comes in. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote friendly, and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. There are options for nearly every budget, and it's super easy to make the switch. You can just transfer over your existing data and get started with your first payroll fast. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/songexploder and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/songexploder. Once more, that's gusto.com/songexploder. This episode is brought to you by booking.com. I've been to a few national parks over the years, and it's always been a pretty magical experience. I've been to Yosemite and Joshua Tree here in California. Those are some of the closest ones to me. But I've been wondering about taking a trip to one that's maybe not so close, and last year I started looking at some lists ranking some of the most beautiful national parks, and one that's come up on a few of the lists is Glacier National Park in Montana. Okay, that's the first part of the daydream sorted. The next is where am I gonna stay? So I went on booking.com to look at some options, and they have all kinds of different places to stay. I found a little cottage that looks incredible. It has a mountain view, it has a balcony, it has air conditioning, it has great reviews. I'm very excited about that idea. Or if I decide I wanna bring my dogs with me, I can use the pet friendly filter and turns out there are some really nice pet-friendly hotels on the site too. So go on, book that trip. It's easy. Booking.com. Booking.yeah. This episode contains explicit language. [guitar strum] Olivia Rodrigo is a Grammy-winning singer and songwriter. In June 2026, she released her third album, You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love. The day it came out, it broke streaming records on Spotify and Amazon Music, and it debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. I talked to Olivia here in my studio, and I also visited her longtime producer and co-writer, Dan Nigro, at his studio. Dan Nigro won the Grammy for Producer of The Year in 2025, in part for his work with Olivia Rodrigo. And for this episode, the two of them told me the story of making Olivia's song, "The Cure," from the original voice memo to the final version.

[singing] But my head is full of poison, and my heart is full of doubt. I've got toxins in my bloodstream. You try hard to suck 'em out. And it feels like medication, and it's good for me, I'm sure. But it don't matter how your love feels