On Thursday October 15th at 8 pm EDT, Olivia Rodrigo announced a remix of her song Expectations from her most recent album “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.” The remix features Chappell Roan, and came with a brand new music video as well.
The song debuted with 4.57 million streams on global Spotify the next day, and 10 million views on YouTube for the music video. In my opinion, the YouTube video is the true standout. The visuals were teased 8 hours before the release of the song and video, and revealed a very campy retro game show theme. The video is definitely one of Olivia’s best, as the creative vision and execution are so strong. Blending themes from game shows such as Family Feud and Jeopardy, the video is also an amazing creative merge between the brands of both Olivia and Chappell.
While Chappell’s addition to the remix was very subtle (a verse and some pronoun changes), it was just the right amount. I especially loved her energy and vocal runs throughout the outro of the song.
In an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Chappell stated how “I don’t know if everyone would be open to have a fully queer verse on their song.” That’s something that’s so cool about the song to me, as well why Chappell’s spot in pop culture is so important (no matter how many hate trains are made about her).