Olivia Rodrigo, while now known for her multiple grammy nominations for her albums SOUR and GUTS, started off at 12-years old as a disney actor. Her first role on Bizaardvark (Disney TV show), allowed her to learn to never be embarrassed about her emotions and helped her conquer her emotions early on, to set her up later to be a brilliant songwriter. She also starred in the Disney show High School Musical: The Musical, which she left after three seasons to pursue new professional opportunities. She soon signed with a new record label and tried hard to forge a new path that wasn’t the disney star turned pop star like some of the others in the industry (ex. Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez).
Olivia Rodrigo’s creative processes depends a lot on journaling. Which she claims she has been doing since the ripe age of thirteen. When writing her newest album GUTS she read Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way”, and learned about the morning pages technique. Which is first thing in the morning is writing three pages of your conscious stream of thoughts and getting it all out, handwritten on paper. She found that this had a very positive impact on her mindset and creative process, and she found it very clarifying. This technique is meant to do exactly that, clear one's mind and fight against the creative death (the idea that your creativity will be negatively affected if everything you do is to monetize it or put it in the public eye where everyone can criticize it). Instead this process allows you to write just for you, and helps you connect to your own creative truths. By physically writing it down it makes it a physical task not a mental act. Rodrigo accredits her creativity to the book “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert”, which she read for the first time while writing her first album. She claims this is the only book she has ever read more than once and claims it was extremely influential in her creative process.
This connects to my focus book The Creative Spark because Fuentes writes about creativity breeding out of necessity. That first we build the things we see as essential and then when mistakes or beauty slips in we find a way to make it different and pleasant, and therefore creativity is born. This can relate to Rodrigo and her journaling. She uses journaling as a way to clear her head and calm her mind, and she pulls inspiration from those words that can be used for her songwriting and enables her to see what she wrote in different ways and use it to create lyrics.
I appreciate your perspective in this post. It is interesting to look deeper at people who have become popular for their creativity and work to understand what sets them apart. It is clear from Olivia Rodrigo that it is not only getting opportunities to make a name for yourself but how you utilize these opportunities. She clearly has something within her that sets her apart from other creatives. She is also interesting because, unlike other creatives, she has performed across different mediums. It will be interesting to see how she continues to grow as a creative as she grows older. She is also affected by the people around her. It would be interesting to study whether or not being around creative people can make someone more creative.
ReplyDeleteI have also found her work to be extremely personal, so it makes sense that she gets her creative spark from her journaling. I thought your connection between her journaling and your focus book was very interesting. As you presented it, journaling is necessary for Olivia. It is necessary as it opens up her mind, but not only does the journaling help her creativity, it is her being creative. It is clear that this process works for her. I love both her albums, and your blog gave me a deeper appreciation for her work.
ReplyDeleteI found this blog interesting, especially reflecting on the piece you included about her ability to turn off feelings of embarrassment due to her beginnings as a Disney star. I think a lot of people really appreciate her work for being so genuine and authentic above all else. It is interesting that this is truly part of her process and unique experience that she doesn't struggle with embarrassment. Her ability to be confident is one of her most drawing factors as a creative.
ReplyDeleteThis post was very insightful! I had no inclination of Olivia's past as a Disney star and her now recent success. I find her success to be admirable especially as we are similar in age and she seems to be very advanced. I always find it interesting to see child stars and what they choose to pursue such as Zendaya, or JoJo Siwa. Olivia Rodrigo has had a successful rebrand and knows how to encapsulate her audience.
ReplyDeleteGiven that Olivia Rodrigo has been such a popular name in pop culture recently, I really enjoyed learning more about her creative process and background. I found the idea of "morning pages" particularly interesting because it seems like something that any of us could do to improve our lives and personal creativity. I used to think that stream of consciousness writing would just be simple for anyone to do as you are just writing down your thoughts, but I have tried to do it before and actually found it quite difficult. It is something that definitely required practice and patience. I had also never heard of "creative death" before but I can understand how if you constantly feel the pressure to produce content that could eventually get in the way of one's creativity and purpose.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to me that Olivia stepped away from Disney in order to pursue new career paths beside the standard disney to pop star transition and yet still became a popstar. I love this idea of "morning pages", and this it's a really cool way to keep your creativity flowing. At least for me, it feels like my subconscious seeps into my conscious process more when I'm about to sleep or just woke up, so I wonder how that might affect the creative output of this technique.
ReplyDeleteI’ve listened to a bit of Rodrigo’s music, here and there, but I probably wouldn’t be able to pick out her songs from a crowd. That’s sort of the thing for me, Olivia Rodrigo seems to be another instance in a line a patterns– childhood star turned singer turned… I’m not sure what happened to them after that, to be honest. Reading such accounts after the Quiet On Set came out…it’s a little offputting. When you grow up in a facade, how much of yourself is that facade? And how can you ever be free of that? The childhood acting scene has it’s tendency to be exploitative, and I hope this wasn’t the case here. Her habit of morning pages seems interesting, and maybe if I could ever make myself, I would! Not the case for now, though.
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