Olivia Rodrigo is gearing up to perform on Saturday Night Live on December 9, with Adam Driver as the host. She’ll be performing following the success of her second album Guts, which came out earlier in 2023. Since the release of her debut album, SOUR, in 2021, Olivia, 20, has been in two public relationships with Zack Bia and Adam Faze. Fans have found lyrics in different songs across the new album, including lead single “Vampire,” that seem to point to her previous relationships.
While the Grammy-winner might have her fair share of epic breakup anthems, Olivia did admit that she accidentally tapped the “follow” button, while she was checking an ex’s social media, during an interview on The Tonight Show in December 2023. “I had this very embarrassing encounter once where I was stalking my ex as one does. Sue me, sorry,” she said. “And I accidentally followed him ’cause I was stalking him. I was just following one person, so it was super obvious that I was following him.”
After the embarrassing moment, Olivia admitted that her phone died, so she wasn’t able to immediately unfollow him. She joked that now she uses a “finsta” account to check in on people.
Before Guts hit streaming services, Olivia revealed that she feels some “responsibility” to give the subjects of her songs a heads up before the songs drop, while speaking to Phoebe Bridgers for Interview Magazine. “Have you ever felt the responsibility to send the subject of a song the song before it comes out, especially now that you have such a giant platform?” Phoebe asked her.
“I feel like last time there was so much weird media s**t and I had no idea how to deal with any of it. Literally, it was the first song out of the gate and all of that s**t happened. I felt so ill-equipped,” Olivia responded. “That was an overwhelming experience, but now I definitely feel a responsibility. I just try not to think about it during the writing process.”
While the songs on her sophomore record don’t directly mention any past beaus, songs like “Bad Idea Right?” and “Get Him Back!” are seemingly inspired by past romances. The former punk-pop hit details getting back together with an ex-boyfriend, despite it being, well, a bad idea. The latter is an alt-rock anthem about trying to make a less-than-favorable ex jealous. “Do I love him? Do I hate him? I guess it’s up and down,” Olivia raps on the track.
Fans have theorized that “Vampire” may be inspired by one of the men that Olivia dated since the release of Sour. One line in particular points to the song’s subject being older than Olivia herself. “Went for me, not for her, ’cause girls your age know better,” Olivia sings in the second verse. Both Zack and Adam are older than her. Another lyric — “You only come out at night” — appears to point to Zack, who works as a DJ and often has gigs in the nighttime. She also references a timeline of “six months” in the lyrics — “Six months of torture” — which is about how long she was publicly linked to Zack (February until August 2022). Her relationship with Adam, meanwhile, lasted about seven months.
It’s probably safe to say that one person whom “Vampire” is NOT about, though, is Olivia’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series co-star, Joshua Bassett. Olivia has already done her fair share of penning lyrics about Josh, as it’s been speculated that most of SOUR was about him and their breakup. Take a deep dive into Olivia’s relationship history below:
Ethan Wacker
Olivia’s first serious boyfriend was actor Ethan Wacker. They met on the Disney Channel comedy series Bizaardvark, where Olivia played Paige Olvera and Ethan played Bernie Schotz. The co-stars officially started dating in July 2018, but they waited six more months until they made the romance Instagram official. “Happy 6 months! You are the greatest,” Ethan wrote alongside a since-deleted photo of the pair from January 2019. Olivia and Ethan continued dating until August 2019, when fans noticed that they wiped footage of each other off their Instagram pages.
However, the exes are still on good terms. When Ethan revealed he got accepted into Vanderbilt University in May 2020, Olivia congratulated her ex-boyfriend on her Instagram Stories. “Ahhhh I’m so proud! He’s the best!” she said at the time, according to reports. Plus, after “Driver’s License” was released, Ethan denied rumors floating around on TikTok that the song was about their relationship. “Nope, I treated her well,” he wrote on TikTok.
Joshua Bassett
The Olivia-Joshua relationship was a major pop culture moment in 2021. The pair, who co-starred in Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series as Nini and Ricky, respectively, were linked in a supposed love triangle involving fellow Disney darling Sabrina Carpenter. Although they never confirmed that they were in a relationship, the lyrics to “Driver’s License” and other songs from SOUR led to major fan speculation.
Olivia and Joshua first met when they were cast in HSMTMTS in 2019. In July 2020, he released the song “Anyone Else,” which he said was about falling for someone who was unavailable. Although he never confirmed that Olivia was the subject of the song, fans were certain that it was about her. Olivia added fuel to that fire in her 2021 track “Driver’s License,” when she sang, “I guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me.”
Summer 2020 is also when Joshua was first spotted out with Sabrina. Weeks later, Olivia hinted that things had gone south in her rumored relationship with Josh, as she posted a TikTok about “failed relationships.” In “Driver’s License,” she seemed to hint that the romance ended because of Sabrina. “You’re probably with that blonde girl, who always made me doubt, she’s so much older than me, she’s everything I’m insecure about,” Olivia sings. Not only Sabrina blonde, but she’s also four years older than Olivia. Meanwhile, Joshua showed support to Olivia when she released the track, calling it a “great song” on his Instagram Story.
Olivia, of course, was asked about the subject of the song in interviews, but she refused to name names. “I totally understand people’s curiosity with specifics of who the song’s about and what it’s about,” she admitted to Billboard. “But, to me, that’s really the least important part of the song. It’s resonating with people because of how emotional it is and I think everything else is not important.” In a March 2021 interview with Radio.Com, she also insisted that she “doesn’t know” Sabrina at all. “I think we’ve met once or twice in passing,” Olivia shared. “But I’ve never had a conversation with her.”
In a GQ interview published June 2021, Joshua addressed the supposed love triangle. He revealed that “the hardest thing” has been “biting my tongue, in a lot of ways, but the reality is it’s kind of like a lost cause trying to talk about any of that stuff, and I refuse to feed into any of the bulls***, so I just don’t.” Joshua added, “[Everyone] is asking me about Sabrina and Olivia. Why don’t we focus on these women for who they are? Let’s focus on the art that they’re making and how great they are instead of their relationship to a boy.” In that same interview, Joshua came out as a member of the LGBTQ community. “Even if there are consequences, I would much rather deal with consequences and live my truth than live in fear,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sabrina seemed to release her own song about the love triangle drama in February 2021. “Maybe you didn’t mean it, maybe blonde was the only rhyme,” she sang on the song “Skin.” This was seemingly a direct response to Olivia’s lyric from “Driver’s License.”
Unfortunately, all of the public drama took a toll on any friendship that Joshua and Olivia may have been able to have at that time. In December 2021, he told GQ that he hadn’t spoken to his former co-star since the release of “Driver’s License.” He also released three breakup songs of his own, which fans think are about Olivia. “If you get to tell your truth, so do I,” he sang on the track “Crisis.” “And it’s cool if you want me to play the bad guy, but don’t you dare act like I didn’t love you.”
The two seemingly squashed their beef, though, when Olivia made a guest appearance on season 3 of HSMTMTS. In July 2022, she and Josh even reunited and posed for photos on the red carpet to promote the show. Olivia also seems to have buried the hatchet with Sabrina, as they were photographed chatting at the Met Gala in 2022.
Adam Faze
Olivia’s next public relationship was with Adam Faze. The pair were first spotted together at the premiere of Space Jam 2 at Six Flags Magic Mountain on June 29, 2021. A source told E! at the time that Olivia brought Adam as her plus one to the event and even introduced him as “her boyfriend.” In November 2021, they were seen packing on PDA out in L.A. in photos obtained by Page Six.
Sadly, Olivia and Adam are no longer together. Their breakup was reported by numerous outlets in February 2022. A source told PEOPLE that “they’ve been over for a bit now.” Olivia and Adam still haven’t publicly discussed their short-lived romance.
Zack Bia
Shortly after news of her split with Adam was confirmed, Olivia was linked to DJ Zack Bia in Feb. 2022. Although they weren’t spotted together until April, it’s been reported that Zack invited Olivia to watch him DJ at a Super Bowl party two months prior. “They hit it off and have been casually hanging out,” a source told E! News at the time.
The first photos of Olivia and Zack together surfaced in April, when they were seen spending time together in New York City while Olivia was in town for her tour. In June 2022, PEOPLE confirmed that Olivia and Zack had been dating since the Super Bowl. “They really like each other,” the mag’s source claimed. However, when Zack was asked about the rumors one day later, he responded, “I have no idea. I didn’t even hear that.”
By August 2022, reports surfaced that Olivia and Zack had broken up. “Their relationship sort of fizzled,” Us Weekly reported. “They were casually dating but haven’t spent time together in a while.”
While neither Olivia nor Zack publicly commented on their relationship, Olivia did admit to making some regretful dating decisions after Sour was released in an Aug. 2023 New York Times interview. Although, she didn’t name anyone in particular. “I kind of felt this pressure to be this girl that I thought everyone expected me to be,” she told the outlet. “I think because of that pressure, maybe I did things that maybe I shouldn’t have — dated people that I shouldn’t have.”
Zack runs in famous circles, and calls stars like Drake, Kendall Jenner and more friends. Before dating Olivia, he was in an on/off relationship with Madison Beer. He was also briefly linked to Madelyn Cline following her split from Chase Stokes.
Louis Partridge
In October 2023, The Sun reported that Olivia was seeing Enola Holmes actor Louis Partridge. The duo has not been seen together in public yet, but an insider told the outlet that they were “inseparable” during Olivia’s trip to London. The pair’s relationship has still not been confirmed as of December 2023.