“Car rides to Malibu. Strawberry ice cream, one spoon for two.” From the off, pop titan Olivia Rodrigo immediately draws the listener into the mindset for summer with the corresponding visual of her cruising along a picturesque sunny Malibu. She’s adorned with sunglasses and an Audrey Hepburn-style scarf framing her face giving an idealistic vintage holiday-abroad vibe. At this moment you want to be Olivia with an ice cream in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. The scene to follow shows an Olivia lookalike parading in a green dress in front of a mirror- the same dress that Olivia wears just moments later. The whole narrative is that she’s idolising and stalking this girl, relating to the lyrics “do you get déjà vu?” and questioning the guy who broke her heart.
At the time of the music video’s release, rumours about a ‘love triangle’ concerning Rodrigo alongside fellow musicians Joshua Bassett and Sabrina Carpenter were rife, speculating that Sabrina was the girl Joshua left Olivia for. Olivia had scored a number one hit with ‘Driver’s License’ in which she sang the lyrics “And you’re probably with that blonde girl”. to which Sabrina publicly responded with single ‘Skin’ where she retaliated “You can try to get under (my skin). While he’s on mine (all on my skin)”. To the public, this appeared as a diss, so when Olivia released Deja Vu it was seen as a retaliation saying well you have him now but everything you do with him, he once did with me. The most epic melodic back and-forth since ‘Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)’ by Eamon and ‘F.U.R.B. (Fuck You Right Back)’ by Frankee in 2004 perhaps?
So watching the ‘Deja Vu’ video, we’re thinking about how gorgeous it would be to sit in an empty cloud-painted swimming pool, drive around Malibu with windswept hair, dance on the beach like you’re in a music video and smash a bunch of 2000’s television. But we’re also thinking about the real fact that someone was before us…and probably behind us. By the end of the video, the two girls acknowledge that they’ve both been watching each other and come to a friendship. An olive branch from Olivia to Sabrina?
