Friday is a good day for many reasons — you can stay up rewatching the last episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty without worrying about work or school. It’s also the day that Olivia Rodrigo dropped a new single from her sophomore album Guts, “bad idea right.” As if that wasn’t enough to talk about, fans think “bad idea right?” is about Joshua Bassett, and speculating this might be a response to his song “Different.” I must admit, I’m one of them. Olivia, who TF is “bad idea right?” about?! We need answers!
“bad idea right?” dropped on Aug.11, with a music video that’s already hit 1.5M views in the first 10 hours. The music video features Rodrigo’s friends Tate McRae, Iris Apatow, and Madison Hu, taking on a fun, lighthearted and playful way to promote her next album Guts, dropping Sept. 8. Naturally, after the song dropped, fans scrambled to find out who “bad idea right?” is about — and they’ve landed on the one and only Joshua Bassett.
So, why do people think “bad idea right?” is about Joshua Bassett? While his song “Different” was released almost a year ago, the lyrics tell a story of a failed romance that has now reconnected as a sneaky link. While this could be about anyone, it seems like too much of a coincidence for Bassett to include the lyrics, “We’ve been to hell and back again” after the (dramatic) Sour album release mixed with his three-song EP response. Plus, at the top of the song he talks about not being friends for the past two years and I’d say that timeline is kinda matching up.
If you want to dig even a little deeper, the first verse of “Different” has a line “And I’m trying not to kiss you, cause we’ve seen how this can end / And my therapist would kill me if she knew I was here,” acknowledging that this pairing may be destined for disaster. Coincidently, Olivia has described her new single as an ill-advised relationship, but an irresistible night with an ex. Perhaps they both feel the same way and if Sour is any indication of how good Rodrigo is about dropping easter eggs, I’m sure we will know very shortly of Sept. 8.
Regardless of who the inspiration behind the song is, it’s clear that Rodrigo is hanging up her innocent HSMTMTS days and growing up singing lines like, “And I told my friends I was asleep, but I never said in whose sheets.” It’s safe to say that, per usual, Twitter is losing its mind.
But Twitter is also doing what twitter does best and making a meme or two