The interview took place on Hampstead Heath in London, a location Rodrigo described as one of her favorite spots in the city. “It’s the best place to hang out,” she said, adding that she once saw a proposal there. She said she would love to receive an outdoor proposal in New York’s Central Park, with a bench placard reading “Will you marry me?” She has already chosen her wedding song: “I Melt with You” by Modern English.
Rodrigo said the new album, her third, was initially conceived as a love story. “I really wanted to capture romantic joy and pleasure for the first time, because my last two albums were very heartbroken and really angsty,” she told the BBC. But the title — “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love” — signals a darker turn. “It’s a love story that falls apart,” she confirmed. “A time capsule of a relationship in a few years of my life.”
The album’s opening track describes meeting a boy who “looks like an angel on the walls of Versailles,” while later songs reflect growing instability. Rodrigo said the song “Purple” was initially written as a sweet love song, but months later she and her collaborators “revisited it and put new chords underneath it and tweaked some of the lyrics. So, yeah, it’s definitely the part of the album where things start to sour and unravel.”
One track, “What’s Wrong With Me,” was reworked after the relationship ended. Rodrigo originally wrote it about missing someone, but revised the lyrics to reflect the realization that the relationship itself was the source of her sadness. She debuted the song with Robert Smith at the Primavera Festival in Spain. Backstage, Smith told BBC 6 Music, “She is genuinely fantastic, as a singer, as a songwriter, as a performer. I’m slightly in awe of how easy she finds it all.”
Rodrigo described experiencing a near-anxiety attack before her Glastonbury headlining set last summer, but said calm overcame her when she stepped on stage. She consumed three bowls of sticky toffee pudding before performing. “If the toffee’s really hot and the ice cream melts on top, it’s really good,” she said.
Rodrigo said she has 60% hearing loss in her left ear, a condition she confirmed when asked. “If you sat on this side of me and tried to tell me a secret, I wouldn’t be able to hear you,” she said.
On political activism, Rodrigo said she chooses her battles carefully but values the outspokenness of women she admired as a child. Last year, she criticized the Trump administration for using her music in videos promoting ICE deportations, calling the policies “barbaric and cruel.” She said she aims not to be liked by all. “When you de-centre that as the primary motivation, I think everything becomes a lot more joyful.”
She said she parted ways with her managers before the new album’s release, building a creative team around her own decision-making, and has skipped events such as the Met Gala that she said do not “inspire me or feel aligned with my values,” according to a recent New York Times interview.
Rodrigo, who grew up in showbusiness on Disney shows, said she values the normalcy she finds in the UK. “I feel so normal here, very adult. I can walk to the pub and meet friends,” she said. “It’s a city where spontaneity is really encouraged. People are very social here, in a way that they’re not in Southern California.”
Asked what role would tempt her back to acting, she said “Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Obviously, the best love story of all time.” She also said her childhood ambition was to be an obstetrician.