“Brutal” was the opening track on 2021’s Sour, the most feverishly anticipated pop debut in years. Two years ago, on her angst-ridden anthem “Brutal,” Rodrigo blurted out “I’m not cool, and I’m not smart/And I can’t even parallel park” to the tune of more than half a billion streams. The parallel-parking thing - funny story. It’s all pretty typical for a 20-year-old driver, except for the fact that the calendar on her car’s display screen reads “Rolling Stone interview.” Accutane, the acne med she’s been on for about six months, makes her lips perpetually dry, so there’s some Burt’s Bees and two travel tubes of Aquaphor jostling around in the cup holder.
Rodrigo has a killer late-July outfit on - short, summery floral dress tall, brown leather boots her fingers decked out in rings - but she’s pretty bummed about the new pimple between her eyebrows. We’re sitting in Rodrigo’s black Range Rover in L.A.’s Highland Park, stopped outside her producer Dan Nigro’s home studio.