Taylor Swift, St. Vincent, & Jack Antonoff Given Writing Credit On Olivia Rodrigo’s “Deja Vu”
Back in April, Olivia Rodrigo released her sticky pop snarl “Deja Vu,” the follow-up to her massive smash “Drivers License.” When the album dropped, a whole lot of people noticed that the bridge of “Deja Vu” sounded a bit like “Cruel Summer,” the song from Taylor Swift’s 2019 album Lover. Specifically, the shouting on the “Cruel Summer” bridge sounds like the shouting on the “Deja Vu” bridge. Now, Rodrigo has made that connection official.
As Rolling Stone points out, Taylor Swift has been given a co-writing credit on “Deja Vu,” and Swift’s “Cruel Summer” collaborators, producer Jack Antonoff and fellow Antonoff collaborator St. Vincent, are also getting credit. All three have been added to the “Deja Vu” metadata on streaming services like Spotify.
In interviews, Rodrigo had already acknowledged Swift’s massive influence, and she’d acknowledged that “Deja Vu” was specifically inspired by “Cruel Summer.” “Deja Vu” isn’t the only song from Rodrigo’s debut album Sour to feature an interpolation of one of Swift’s songs; her ballad “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back” also uses pieces of “New Year’s Day,” the last song on Swift’s 2017 album Reputation. Rodrigo gave songwriting credit on that one to Swift and Antonoff right away.
Swift and Rodrigo have publicly professed mutual fandom, so this doesn’t seem to be a case of Rodrigo mollifying a pissed-off Swift, but who knows. Check out the videos for both tracks below.
Some people also think that “Deja Vu” sounds like Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” but nobody’s given any songwriting credits to Radiohead on that one. But I think it’s more fun to argue over whether “Deja Vu” is now the best St. Vincent song of 2021.