Welcome to Sleeper Hit Support Group, a column diving into the song currently occupying the bottom spot of the Billboard Hot 100.
In a pop landscape that asks more questions that it answers, I'm setting out to answer three questions about each of these songs: how it got here, if the song is good, and where it's going. In this 100th spot we'll find unlikely ascents, falls from grace, and resurgences of hits from bygone eras.
Today, we're examining "cigarette smoke," the harrowing closer of Olivia Rodrigo's you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.
How did it get here?
I'm cheating a little here. "cigarette smoke" is not #100 this week, it's #99. The real #100 is Jordan Davis' "Turn This Truck Around," and to be frank, I am just exhausted from writing about country music and writing about songs I don't like. And as the late, great, Lesley Gore probably said, "It's my column, and I'll cheat if I want to" (you would cheat too if it happened to you).
In the wake of the most deliberately planned, sprawling, and wide-reaching album rollout in recent memory, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love was bound to reach new heights for Olivia Rodrigo. I doubt any readers of this column need an explainer on Rodrigo's career, so instead I'll be diving into yspsfagsil's masterful rollout from the color-changing mural teaser to the Pitchfork cover story and beyond.
In addition to the record being her best yet, the way that Rodrigo and her new team (she fired her previous pair of managers and opted to work with a full-service executive team) captured audiences from the little girls that idolize her to the skeptical New York Times-reading old folks is what allowed the full album to remain on the Hot 100 for a month post-release. It's a testament both to her continued ubiquity as an artist and the increasingly sprawling nature of press tours as our media landscape decentralizes further.
The rollout for yspsfagsil began before the record was even finished. During the festival-heavy final leg of the GUTS tour, Rodrigo began teasing lyrics that'd appear in the front half of the record via the baby tees she'd wear during the sets' encores.
A few weeks before the album's announcement, a mural in Los Angeles was painted the signature purple shade that's become a staple of Rodrigo's branding. In conjunction with her website, the wall gradually turned the baby pink shade of her dress on the album cover. The wall would continue to be used as a promotional tool throughout the rollout, and would be the setting for a handful of fan events.
rest in peace olivia rodrigo wall
— olivia’s livies 🩷 (@LiviesHQ) July 15, 2026
march 13, 2026 - july 13, 2026 pic.twitter.com/TqxHAuX6Au
Around the time the mural was making headlines, Rodrigo's British Vogue cover story was published, which provided the first written confirmation of a new album. In hindsight, the profile is littered with teasers of what to expect from the then still-unanounced record. Writer Amel Mukhtar was previewed "drop dead," "the cure," and "maggots for brains," during her interview with Rodrigo, and she shared the core ethos of the project: “I realized all my favorite romantic love songs were beautiful because they had a tinge of fear or yearning in them.”
The record was announced two weeks later on April 2nd, but lead single "drop dead" didn't come out for another two weeks in service of drumming up hype and speculation. There were three different videos released amid the track's push for #1, but the main event was the video filmed in the palace of Versailles.
As much as I do love this song, some of the fan engagement surrounding the #1 push left a sour taste in my mouth. The streaming/buying instructions to maximize chart placement was brought to prominence after Justin Bieber posted a fan-made infographic to his Instagram grid, and the chart manipulation that was once contained within the music industry was demonstrably passed onto fanbases. Olivia's fan engagement accounts (known as LiviesHQ) posted similar instructions for fans to follow when streaming/buying "drop dead." The fans will usually circulate things like this amongst themselves, so the mask-off involvement from official channels is just unsavory.
Official page posting about charting reminders..
by u/tacosupremeacid in OliviaRodrigo
The live debut of "drop dead" came as a surprise during Addison Rae's Coachella weekend two set. The performance was... a little rough, but it's a tough song to sing live and I'm sure she was incredibly nervous.
She would clean up her vocals by the song's second performance at an acoustic open mic in Brooklyn, a much more controlled environment with considerably lower stakes.
For the day one Livies, Rodrigo graced the cover of Cosmopolitan with an interview by her best friend and Disney Channel costar Madison Hu. While the interview is a cute look into their friendship and Olivia's personality, there are an abundance of unnecessary and largely superfluous footnotes that completely kill the profile's pacing.
May was a relatively slower month for Rodrigo, with most of the attention brought to her double-duty stint on SNL (preceded by a government-mandated Fallon appearance). While the sketches were pretty middle-of-the-road, her musical performances really stole the show. She perfected her performance of "drop dead" by opting a couple keys down, but what really blew me away that night was the debut of "begged," which has quickly become my favorite song of hers. Indie darling Weyes Blood was among the three backing singers that joined her onstage, and Rodrigo captured the devastation of the song in her performance perfectly – absolutely stunning stuff.
The final week of May saw the release of second single "the cure" and Rodrigo's appearances on The New York Times' Popcast, where she answered hot-button questions about her responsibility to speak out against political injustice, her alleged feud with Taylor Swift over "deja vu" songwriting credits, and her absence from this year's Met Gala. More than any interview, Rodrigo's iron-clad Disney media training was on full display as she catches herself in any statement that feels even remotely critical.
For example, when explaining her artistic departure from the punk influences of GUTS, she said "I think a song like ['maggots for brains'] feels alternative to me without being like 'I Love Rock and Roll' by Joan Jet," and immediately catches herself by saying "...which is one of my favorite songs, love that song."
Leading up to yspsfagsil's June 12th release, the media junket sped up tenfold. She went coast to coast doing countless radio interviews, covered CMAT's "When A Good Man Cries" for the BBC Live Lounge, and had a cover story in DAZED published. The Q+A in the article is really just supplement for the high-fashion editorial photoshoot, though.
On June 6th, Rodrigo performed a surprise set at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, bringing out Robert Smith to perform their collaboration "what's wrong with me" that was teased all the way back in the British Vogue article when Smith said they've spent "memorable nights in the studio together."
Album release-eve brought a BBC interview, a lengthy conversation with Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (an institution Olivia consistently champions) and an interview/performance on Kimmel.
All of the post-album press seemed to serve the older, "high brow" flank of her audience, having lengthy chats with Zane Lowe, Nardwuar, and our very own Anthony Fantano. No online controversy sparked from Olivia's chat with Fantano.... none, nothing at all, I promise, don't look it up.
On the 22nd of June, the announcement of Rodrigo's all-female festival Daisy Chain Fields was announced via an interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America and expounded upon in an incredibly written Pitchfork cover story by journalist Shaad D'Souza. With all of these interviews, Olivia does an incredible job at showcasing her personality and tastes, which she's evidently grown much more confident in as she's gotten older. I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, but she is remarkably well adjusted for someone who's been in the spotlight her entire conscious life.
But with all that said...
Is the song any good?
Rodrigo and I are more or less the same age, so I feel predisposed to resonate with her music more than most, but the sentiments and themes expressed on yspsfagsil and "cigarette smoke" in particular feel like they transcend those that exist in the bounds of age and gender.
The emotional whiplash that comes in the weeks and months following a breakup is captured remarkably well in the record's final three tracks, but "cigarette smoke" feels lyrically distinct from every song that comes before it. The blame for this breakup, at least in part, is finally turned towards the ex after 45 minutes of Olivia blaming herself for the relationship's problems. "I regret you and how long I stayed / I resent you for not being brave," she admits in the pre-chorus. Akin to real life, a lot of loose ends introduced earlier in the record are referenced but not necessarily tied up, specifically her partner's lingering ex in "my way" ("I regret you and what I let slide / I resent you for taking her side"). The missing details resonate as mature restraint rather than incompletion.
Steady strumming soundtracks the realizations that haunt Olivia the most, be it newfound absences or misinformed choices. Her house is silent and has half as many belongings. She's constantly reminded of memories she can't shake. The dejectedness in her delivery in the song's first half is what really sells it, making that eventual crescendo and wailed bridge all the more impactful. Jumping from her higher to lower register, she asks an evergreen, unanswerable question: "Why'd I try at all?"
Where is it going?
Despite that stats showing it's the record's second-least-popular song, I have faith that "cigarette smoke" will have more longevity than any other song I've covered on this column (spare maybe "Fame Is A Gun," depending on how Addison's career shakes out). you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love very well could be Rodrigo's magnum opus, but at only 23, she has plenty of time to 1-up herself further.
The narrative of the record is so well crafted and executed, and "cigarette smoke" is the final piece of that puzzle – the half-screwed nail in the coffin. It's a welcome addition to the breakup song cannon, one that people will be crying in their bedrooms to for years to come. It already seems to be finding itself a fan-favorite, so hopefully it'll get its well-deserved moment on Rodrigo's upcoming world tour. Here's to hoping.
What do you think?
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