Two years on from her highly acclaimed, multi-platinum breakout debut album SOUR (2021), Olivia Rodrigo has announced that her follow-up effort GUTS will arrive September 8th courtesy of Geffen Records. The singer-songwriter has also unveiled the album’s lead single “vampire,” which begins with a subdued piano melody before morphing into a more propulsive tempo, with her penchant for raw emotion, lyrical introspection and vocal versatility on full display.

“I was upset about a certain situation and went to the studio alone and sat down at the grand piano, and the chords and melody and lyrics just poured out of me—almost like an out-of-body experience,” Rodrigo says of the single’s inspiration in an official statement. “It’s a song about feeling confused and hurt, and at first I thought it was meant to be a piano ballad. But when Dan and I started working on it, we juxtaposed the lyrics with these big drums and crazy tempo changes. So now it’s like a heartbreak song you can dance to.”

“When I was making SOUR I was so new to the process and also so heartbroken; I’d just sit at the piano for hours and feel overcome with things I needed to express,” she continues. “But this album was much more about focusing on the craft of songwriting, which sometimes meant not taking myself so seriously and getting a little more tongue-in-cheek with my lyrics. We experimented so much with different approaches to writing and ended up with something that’s much more rock-influenced than anything I’ve done before.”

Watch the Petra Collins directed video for “vampire” below and watch this space for additional news about the album and accompanying tour plans.

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