Olivia Rodrigo was on a winning streak when she wrote her hit 2021 single, “Deja Vu.” A month after Rodrigo’s debut single which turned into a global hit and made her a household name, “Drivers License,” was written, she and frequent collaborator Dan Nigro went back to the studio to pen her follow-up hit, “Deja Vu.” The song was based on a line Rodrigo had written on her phone that would once again turn into gold. “It’s not a vocal-driven song necessarily, it has great lyrics,” Rodrigo shared with Zane Lowe of Apple Music about “Deja Vu.” It’s really about the music, and the feeling comes from the music and not necessarily always the lyrics.”
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Meaning Behind the Song
The hit writers were initially working on a sad song, but it wasn’t coming together the way they hoped. That’s when Nigro asked what else she had to work with, and Rodrigo pitched a lyric that changed the course of the writing session. “I had this line in my phone written for a while it says, ‘When she’s with you, do you get deja vu?'” Rodrigo recalled to Lowe. “I’m sort of obsessed with the concept of déjà vu. I really love that concept [because] I get déjà vu all the time.”
Nigro also liked the concept and the two set off “creating this whole world,” writing about the mind-altering experience of seeing your ex-boyfriend move on with someone else, yet they do many of the same activities. She thinks it’s special / But it’s all reused / That was our place, I found it first / I made the jokes you tell to her when she’s with you / Do you get déjà vu when she’s with you? Rodrigo wails 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 get with somebody else, and see them living the life that 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 really talk about a ton…I really love painting pictures with songs and so we tried to be really vivid with the lyrics.”
Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, and Annie Clark also got a songwriting credit, as “Deja Vu” features an interpolation of Swift’s hit “Cruel Summer.” The bridge of Rodrigo’s song where she yells the aforementioned lyrics is akin to the bridge of “Cruel Summer” where Swift sings: Every night that summer just to seal my fate / And I screamed for whatever it’s worth / “I love you, ” ain’t that the worst thing you ever heard? before screaming emo-style: He looks up grinning like a devil.
“It’s one of my favorite songs ever,” Rodrigo told Rolling Stone about “Cruel Summer.” “I love the yelly vocals in it, like the harmonized yells that [Swift] does, I think they’re super electric and moving, so I wanted to do something like that.”
The singer confessed to Lowe that “Deja Vu” took a lot of “trial and error” to get it where she wanted it, however, her hard work paid off. “Deja Vu” charted all around the world, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, making the then 18-year-old the first artist to have her first two singles debut inside the Top 10 on the all-genre chart.
Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Universal Music Group for Brands
