Why Olivia Rodrigo Skipped the 2024 Met Gala

After attending the Met Gala for three consecutive years, Olivia Rodrigo took her first year off: The singer is on her Guts tour, playing two shows in Glasgow on May 7 and 8, thus explaining her necessary absence from fashion’s big night.

Rodrigo has spent the majority of 2024 on tour, performing hits from her second album, Guts. She spoke to Variety in late November about the significance of the project and its lyrics. “When I write, my goal is to capture the essence of what I’m feeling in a way that’s going to be poignant and concise,” she said. “On Guts, I felt I had a lot I wanted to get off of my chest—the shame and embarrassment and regrets. All feelings that are hard to externalize in everyday life, but I think this record gave me an outlet to process them… It was a very important album for me to write as Olivia the person.”

Of the specific lessons writing Guts taught her, she told Variety, “The experience tested my confidence and patience. It taught me some important lessons about songwriting in terms of focusing on your craft rather than just waiting for inspiration to strike. It taught me about the mindset that is most conducive to writing: You can never sit down at the piano and try to write something that everyone will like; that always results in a really bad song. It taught me that I write songs that I want to hear.

“These days, I try to write one song every day. I just feel like myself when I’m writing. If I don’t do it, I get depressed. I’m just writing songs to process what’s going on, whether in my personal life or in my perception of the world.”