RAMBLE ON: "Can't Catch Me Now" by Olivia Rodrigo

This review contains spoilers for The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The Hunger Games franchise is a story about stories, about narratives – or to put it more cynically, about marketing. Its key innovation to the “deadly competition” genre, the thing that sets it apart from The Running Man, Battle Royale, Squid Game and so on (and one largely botched by the film adaptations), is the audience participation aspect – viewers will pitch in to help the contestants they like the most, which means that the key to victory is selling yourself to the audience, coming up with framings and storylines to make yourself more sympathetic. (The second-most important innovation is that unlike every other entry in this genre, we are denied the pleasure of viewing the games like a spectator; we only ever see it from Katniss’s perspective, making the fabrication of the narratives all the starker. This is why they keep trying to turn Squid Game into a real-life game show for your viewing pleasure but could never do so with The Hunger Games.) This doesn’t end once our protagonist Katniss leaves the world of deadly game shows – as both a reality show contestant and as a rebel leader, Katniss’s hair, makeup and wardrobe are of paramount importance.

The Hunger Games soundtracks never became a music powerhouse the way its rival YA franchise Twilight did, but its one big hit, “The Hanging Tree,” is important to the war itself; in-universe, it’s a dark folk ballad about an execution that turns into a battle cry for the rebellion. Music, just like everything else in this universe, is propaganda.

Katniss only became a fan favorite through her spontaneity, giving her reality show a strong dose of actual reality; in most other regards, though, she never really liked or understood the camera. The female lead of the prequel, meanwhile, understands the camera instinctively. Lucy Gray Baird (a member of some fictional ethnic group that’s basically Romanis with Floribama accents) is a traveling entertainer by trade, and she starts singing the second she is dragged onstage as a tribute. She sings, and from then on out, it seems like she never, ever stops; she’s just constantly singing, in joy, in defiance, in fear. Even before she learns that this is going to be vital to her survival (she’s in the first games with audience participation), she’s a born spotlight hog. (She is played excellently in the movie by Rachel Zegler, who has theater kid energy written into her bones.)

The Hunger Games marketing team attempted to find some analog for Katniss in the pop world – first with Taylor Swift, then still a supposedly small-town girl from Appalachian country like Katniss; then, as our heroine becomes more entrenched in the rebellion, with Lorde, a revolutionary in her own right. These songs never became massive but they did well enough. For the prequel, they conveniently had another pop singer lined up to symbolically portray their protagonist: the hottest starlet of 2023, Olivia Rodrigo. She had the same hair as Lucy, same complexion, same dramatic energy; it couldn’t be more perfect. Olivia was the obvious choice to sing Lucy Gray’s theme song.

Or was she? The more I think about, the closer Lucy Gray Baird is to Olivia’s opposite than being any kind of parallel. Olivia’s two albums are excellent but if I had to define Olivia as a persona, I would say that, for such a poised performer, she projects extreme insecurity. Her ‘90s chick-rock influences give her music some edge, but she’s no riot grrrrl; “drivers license,” “brutal,” “get him back,” even her angriest ones like “déjà vu” or “vampire” or “good 4 u,” all of them depict a very young woman who is losing her shit and struggling to get a hold of her own life. When this song came out, she was also promoting her second album, “GUTS”; “guts” not as in "bravery" but in "spilling your guts," Olivia as always vomiting out her insecurities. None of that describes Lucy, the hero – but not the protagonist –  of her story; she’s not happy about being in a contrived death game and being attacked by ridiculous genetically-engineered mutant snakes, obviously, and she’s afraid for her life, but she doesn’t project fear, or weakness, or frailty (even though she’s one of the least combat-ready contestants in the games). To the end, even at her lowest, she expresses only defiance. It is impossible to imagine this character getting upset because her ex is now getting strawberry ice cream with someone else.

“Can’t Catch Me Now” is the song Rodrigo wrote with her regular producer Dan Nigro (and also with backup vocals from Olivia’s tour opener, aspiring pop starlet Chappell Roan; check her out if you’ve never heard her stuff, I think she’s going places). It’s obviously an Olivia song but at the same time at once feels anomalous in her catalog. It’s a folk ballad, of the kind favored by the Hunger Games franchise; it’s also brooding and ominous, mysterious in a way that Olivia has never been. There is no Olivia in “Can’t Catch Me Now”; it’s all character work, all Lucy, Lucy’s story, her attitudes, her persona. It’s not even in lowercase letters, an Olivia trademark. Again, Lucy is not the protagonist; the POV character of Songbirds and Snakes is Coriolanus Snow. Snow will be the future Big Bad of the franchise; Lucy’s future is an enigma. In the end, Snow (and the audience) realizes we didn’t really know anything about her; she never showed her cards. She has nothing to do with someone with as few secrets, and with as much main character syndrome, as Olivia. Olivia is big because she’s relatable; Lucy is anything but.

If The Hunger Games is about narrative, then it offers Olivia the chance to correct her own narrative. Joshua Bassett claims that fallout from “drivers license” stressed him out so badly it sent him to the hospital; its success hurt him, but I doubt the song alone could have done it. “drivers license,” or even “déjà vu” or “good 4 u” or “vampire,” are good at expressing pain but they’re not good at drawing blood. I don’t think that was really her objective, and if it was, she didn’t succeed – compared to a true asskicker like Adele or Beyonce, Olivia is just a teenage girl who got dumped. But on “Can’t Catch Me Now” she’s a taunt, a ghost, a revenge, an absence. It may well not even be the real Lucy, but Snow imagining Lucy in her head. Playing a character gives Olivia the empowerment she’s never had writing as herself. Olivia tried to wound by spilling out all her pain and emotions so you can see how much you’ve hurt her. Olivia as Lucy realizes that what is truly cutting is silence.

A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is quite easily the best book in the franchise (if only for not being written in first-person present tense, a stylistic choice that constantly reminds you you’re reading a book for ten-year-olds). It’s not perfect. The biggest complaint about both book and movie is its shockingly abrupt ending – the second Lucy realizes Snow’s true nature, she’s already launched her final plan; before any of this has registered to the audience, she’s already disappeared. The book is the same way, like the author realized she had only five pages left to wrap everything up. This bothers me less the more I think about it. The song follows the movie by abruptly ending, in the middle of a thought, “you thought that this was the end,” the pre-chorus left hanging with no chorus following. It’s a weaponized anti-climax (maybe my favorite pop moment from that year), the lack of resolution demonstrating all the way the singer can hurt you with her absence. Two albums in, on a one-off soundtrack hit, Olivia has finally figured out the truest maxim in showbiz, the key to a good narrative in pop music, film, reality TV, romance and deadly YA dystopian game shows alike – always leave them wanting more.