Olivia Rodrigo’s producer Dan Nigro reveals he fought for “bad idea right” to be the ‘GUTS’ lead single:
“I definitely lost a lot of hair because of that. My favorite song, I was outvoted deeply on. I was literally like standing on an island by myself being like, ‘bad idea, right, bad idea, right’… everyone’s like, ‘Vampire’! I mean, I get it, actually, why ‘Vampire’ would work better, but I still, was just really excited about ‘Bad Idea, RIght?’ and everybody seeing the more sarcastic side of Olivia that I don’t think was really apparent on ‘Sour.’”
Olivia Rodrigo followed-up her Grammy-winning Sour album with another banger. Her debut album set the bar high, but she seems to have cleared it. In 2024, she will embark on her second headlining tour, the “Guts” world tour. She will be making the jump from playing theaters such as Radio City Music Hall to playing Madison Square Garden on her sophomore tour. Not bad at all.
The performance/conversation for AmEx cardholders was filmed and will go up on Rodrigo’s YouTube page for two days, starting Tuesday night
In an intimate performance and conversation in Los Angeles Monday night, Olivia Rodrigo admitted that there were tears shed during the making of her new album, “Guts.” But she and producer/co-writer Dan Nigro clarified that it wasn’t just about the emotion in the lyrics. Some of those were tears of frustration as they obsessed over songs and struggled to get her all-important sophomore release just right over its 10-month creation.
“Most of the recording is you crying,” kidded Nigro.
“That’s album three, just me crying,” she retorted. They then bantered over how they would keep their “Sour”/”Guts” tradition of four-letter album titles going for the next one when “Cries” has five letters in it. “‘CRYZ’ with a Z at the end,” Rodrigo finally proposed, proving that now, as with the loggerheads they sometimes found themselves at making the new record, there’s always a solution.
Rodrigo and Nigro joined up for this rare, lengthy, outside-the-studio collaboration for what was billed as “An Evening With Olivia Rodrigo,” an American Express-sponsored event at the Theatre at Ace Hotel that had been announced to fans just the day before. The roughly 1,600 cardholders who snapped up the $25 tickets with just an hour’s notice of the on-sale knew they’d more or less won the Olivia Rodrigo lottery, given that all the tour dates Rodrigo will be doing next year in arenas 10 times that size sold out just as immediately as tickets for this acoustic performance did.
Dan Nigro would still get his wish, as “Bad Idea Right?” was the second single off of Guts. It was released on August 11, nearly a month ahead of the full album release.