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Olivia Rodrigo’s third album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” arrives June 12 with multiple songs inspired by Sex and the City’s Miranda and Steve.
Olivia Rodrigo has a TV-show muse this time. The 23-year-old pop star is set to release her third studio album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, on June 12 via Geffen Records, with multiple songs on the record inspired by the on-again, off-again relationship between Miranda Hobbes and Steve Brady from Sex and the City.
Billboard spelled out the project. The magazine’s writeup of Rodrigo’s Tonight Show appearance and her pivot to love songs after two heartbreak records reports that Rodrigo told Jimmy Fallon she wanted this album to be “about romantic love in more of a positive sense” after the angsty tone of her first two.
The Sex and the City reference is specific. Rodrigo told Fallon “multiple songs” on the album are about Miranda and Steve, and that the show is “my favorite show. I think I watched every single episode maybe three times.”
The lead single confirmed the new positioning. “Drop Dead” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Rodrigo’s fourth song to open in the top spot, with the singer telling Fallon the track is “basically about an awesome first date.”
That first single sets the framing. “It’s the first step in the journey of You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl,” Rodrigo said. “It goes in lots of different places from here, but this is the first chapter.”
The reference tracks tell the rest. Rodrigo cited The Cure‘s “Love Song” and Lana Del Rey‘s “Video Games” as the two favorite love songs whose “sadness and longing and melancholy” she wanted to inject into her own.
Rolling Stone caught a specific Sex and the City moment. The magazine’s summary of Rodrigo’s Miranda-Steve reunion-scene reference and the album’s June 12 release date notes that Rodrigo cited the show’s Miranda-and-Steve reconciliation specifically, with Miranda’s “any time something funny happens I just want to tell you” line landing as the inspiration for at least one of the album’s songs.
The album breaks her four-letter title pattern. Sour (2021) and Guts (2023) both spent time at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, but Rodrigo told Fallon she “always knew” the third record would not follow the same naming convention.
The tour is already booked. The Unraveled Tour will run 65 arena dates across North America, Europe, and the UK starting September 25 at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford, Connecticut, and continuing through fall and winter.
Harper’s Bazaar caught the off-tour reset. The magazine’s interview about Rodrigo’s post-Guts-Tour return to Los Angeles studio life and her writing routine tracks how Rodrigo settled back into LA after her last world tour ended, with the new album emerging from a studio routine built around freeway car-time and turkey sandwiches.
Jack White gave her a good-luck token. Rodrigo told Fallon that Jack White sent a gift to her dressing room before her Saturday Night Live double-duty appearance earlier this month, where she served as both host and musical guest.
The SNL appearance was the kind she had been chasing. Rodrigo told Fallon that pulling double-duty on the show “has always been a huge dream of mine,” with the performance featuring “Drop Dead” and another new song from the upcoming record.
The June 12 release is now the next chapter. With “Drop Dead” already at No. 1 and the tour announced for fall, Rodrigo’s promotional run for You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love sits in front of an album drop that her past two records say will not arrive quietly.
For Rodrigo, the third-album math is unusual. Two prior chart-topping records, four No. 1 singles by age 23, a 65-date arena tour announced before the new album is out, and a love-song record framed by a TV reunion scene from before she was born is a position few of her peers have built into.
