Olivia Rodrigo's Newest Song Breaks A Longstanding Tradition
GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND – JUNE 29: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Olivia Rodrigo performs with Robert Smith of The Cure on the Pyramid stage during day five of Glastonbury festival 2025 at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 29, 2025 in Glastonbury, England. Established by Michael Eavis in 1970, Glastonbury has grown into the UK’s largest music festival, drawing over 200,000 fans to enjoy performances across more than 100 stages. In 2026, the festival will take a fallow year, a planned pause to allow the Worthy Farm site time to rest and recover. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
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Olivia Rodrigo has never put another artist’s name on one of her songs. Not on SOURnot on GUTSnot on any of the singles in between.
That changed, at a surprise set at Primavera Sound. This weekend, Rodrigo debuted “What’s Wrong With Me”, her first-ever collaboration, and brought out a personal hero turned collaborator to perform it with her live.
How Olivia Rodrigo Revealed Her New Song
The reveal of Rodrigo’s duet with The Cure’s Robert Smith came just hours after Rodrigo made a surprise announcement she would play at the Barcelona festival, sharing an Instagram Story captioned “Surprise!!!” with a thumbs-up photo from the festival grounds. She remained silent about Smith’s involvement until he walked on stage. Before playing the song, Rodrigo told the crowd, “It’s really special to me for so many reasons, primarily because it’s the first song I’ve ever had a feature on.”
When Smith appeared, the audience’s reaction was immediate. “I can’t believe this song exists with the person that it exists with. I’m just so fucking over the moon,” Rodrigo said. By the end of the performance, after hugging Smith, she told the crowd, “I feel like I’m gonna cry. I can’t believe that’s a thing that happened in the real world and not just a figment of my imagination.”
Industry folks who attended a private listening session for this album already knew Smith would feature on the song, but Variety says “attendees were sworn to secrecy until Rodrigo revealed the news herself”.
What ‘What’s Wrong With Me’ Is About
“What’s Wrong With Me” is a breezy pop song that falls into the “you seem pretty sad” half of the album, despite its upbeat musical tone. The lyrics describe a crystallising moment in which the narrator realises her relationship is the thing that is not working in her life, despite her best hopes and intentions. The pre-chorus runs: “I’m not feeling like myself, and nothing ever seems to help,” leading into: “Went to the doctor and she said I was fine / But every movie that I’ve seen makes me cry / It’s like somebody put a weight on my chest / I should talk to a friend, but I can’t get out of bed / My head is spinning and my stomach is sick/Say I’m in love, so it’s hard to admit/I can’t eat, I can’t sleep/I think you’re what’s wrong with me”
Robert Smith x Olivia Rodrigo: The History
GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND – JUNE 29: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Robert Smith performs with Olivia Rodrigo during day five of Glastonbury festival 2025 at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 29, 2025 in Glastonbury, England. Established by Michael Eavis in 1970, Glastonbury has grown into the UK’s largest music festival, drawing over 200,000 fans to enjoy performances across more than 100 stages. In 2026, the festival will take a fallow year, a planned pause to allow the Worthy Farm site time to rest and recover. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
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The collaboration is the result of a friendship that has been building publicly for two years. It began at Glastonbury 2025, where Rodrigo headlined and brought Smith out on stage to perform The Cure classic “Friday I’m in Love” and “Just Like Heaven”. Rodrigo introduced him to the crowd as “perhaps the greatest songwriter to come out of England” and “a personal hero of mine.” Rodrigo subsequently released the entirety of her Glastonbury set, Smith cameo and all, as a live album titled Live From Glastonbury (A BBC Recording).
Smith is 66 years old and has been the creative force behind The Cure since the British band’s formation in 1976. Their discography spans 13 studio albums, and “Friday I’m in Love,” released in 1992, which has over 1 billion streams on Spotify.
Writing to British Vogue ahead of Rodrigo’s album release, Smith described having become a genuine fan of her music after first hearing “drivers license.” “I bought Sourand then Guts — both on CD!” he wrote. “Although most of the songs on those two albums are not really ‘aimed at my demographic,’ they are all so good that it is hard not to fall in love with them.” He also dropped a mention of their time in the studio, in what we now know as a tease. “She calls me up quite a bit to talk about clothes and fashion — and we have enjoyed a couple of memorable nights in the studio together.”
Rodrigo’s admiration of Smith is also woven directly into the new album. On “Drop Dead,” the record breaking lead track which debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, she works the title of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” into the opening verse. The album also contains a track simply titled “The Cure” which has nothing to do with Smith’s band, but definitely doesn’t feel coincidental on an album also featuring Robert Smith.
What This Means For The Album
Olivia Rodrigo’s third studio album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, releases on Friday, June 12, 2026. The record is structured as a two-act narrative — the first half titled “for a girl so in love,” the second “you seem pretty sad” — with “What’s Wrong With Me” falling in the album’s second act. The Unravelled Tour in support of the album kicks off in North America in September before moving to Europe in Spring 2027. All dates are sold out.
