Of all the songs on Olivia Rodrigo‘s new album, GUTS, few have attracted as much speculation as “lacy,” with fans dissecting the lyrics and trying to figure out who it’s about. Olivia won’t reveal that, but she has revealed what inspired it.
Variety reports that during a conversation at the Grammy Museum in LA with hit songwriter Linda Perry, Olivia responded to Perry’s question about whether or not “lacy” is about an actual person by laughing, “I mean, it’s whoever you want it to be, baby!” But then she got serious about it.
“I took a poetry class at USC last year. I’ve always been really interested in poetry. … And so I took this class, and it was amazing,” Olivia said, according to Variety. “I wrote this poem called ‘Lacy,’ about this sort of all-encompassing envy that I was feeling, for one of the assignments in class. It was like a homework assignment. And I loved it so much that I turned into this song. It’s one of my favorites.”
When she performed the song acoustically at the event, she added, “I just remember I was sitting at my kitchen counter and I wrote, ‘Lacy, oh Lacy, skin like puff pastry…’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ and finished off the poem and turned it into a song.”
During the event, Olivia also revealed that she recorded her vinyl-only bonus track “Obsessed” with alt-rocker St. Vincent and the that song she wishes she had written is “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette.
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