Since everyone is in the mood to turn the clock back right now (see also: the Mean Girls x Wal-Mart commercial), it makes sense to give people a taste of going back to the 2012-2015 era by offering a new installment in the The Hunger Games saga: The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. While Jennifer Lawrence ruled the Suzanne Collins-created universe during the aforementioned three-year period (and caught a lot of flak for later dubbing herself the first woman to lead an action movie) as Katniss Everdeen, this time around, the star of the prequel series will be Lucy Gray Baird, as played by Rachel Zegler. The latter of whom has come up quickly in the world of Major Movies after starring in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 adaptation of West Side Story. Just as Olivia Rodrigo, too, has experienced her own meteoric rise in the short two years since 2021, when “drivers license” first came out.
In just two short years, she’s achieved many milestones, including being the youngest artist to get three number one singles on the charts (“drivers license,” “good 4 u” and “vampire”), as well as having a record (Sour) that has become the longest-running debut to stay in the top ten of the Billboard 200 album chart. And, of course, she’s already released a sophomore album called Guts (which doesn’t display anything that gutsy, apart from more consciously aligning herself with Lana Del Rey stylings instead of Taylor Swift ones). The only thing she hasn’t done, not really (because we’re not counting High School Musical shit), is write a song specifically for a soundtrack. That is, until now. And since her greatest influences, Alanis Morrisette, Del Rey and Swift have all done that (one of them quite a few times), it was only natural for Rodrigo to finally take on this career challenge. Alas, since there’s no new installments of Twilight on the horizon, Rodrigo apparently needed to settle for the next best mass-marketed book series that would have appealed to her in her preteen years: The Hunger Games. Nothing to turn one’s nose up at, clearly, as Rodrigo has composed a soundtrack offering that rivals some of her best work on any studio album.
Entitled “Can’t Catch Me Now,” (which sounds like a sequel to Catch Me If You Can), Rodrigo also follows in the footsteps of her Gen Z contemporary, Billie Eilish (who provided soulful numbers for both No Time To Die and Barbie), by opting for a slow jam to punctuate the dramatic nature of a film such as this. Ostensibly told from the perspective of Lucy as she flees from the wicked clutches of Coriolanus “Coryo” Snow (Tom Blyth), the moody, guitar-laden track is once again produced by Rodrigo’s go-to, Dan Nigro. Commencing with a gentle arrangement of guitar strings, Rodrigo paints the picture, “There’s blood on the side of the mountain/There’s writing all over the wall/Shadows of us are still dancin’/In every room and every hall/There’s snow fallin’ over the city/You thought that it would wash away/The bitter taste of my fury/And all of the messes you made/Yeah, you think that you got away.”
In truth, the song sounds like any angst-ridden Rodrigo number that seeks to invoke guilt on the part of the man who has wronged her, peppered with occasional warnings that vengeance will be hers in the end. To boot, it also possesses a certain “Carolina” by Taylor Swift tinge (this being the song Swift wrote for the Where the Crawdads Sing Soundtrack). Not just because both are slow-tempoed and dripping with accusatory venom, but because each ultimately tells a story about a girl who is left no choice but to retreat into the feral wilderness. The only place where she can ever truly be free. Swift, too, sings from the perspective of the story’s protagonist, Kya Clark, as she declares, “And you didn’t see me here/No, they never did see me here/And she’s in my dreams/Into the mist, into the clouds/Don’t leave/I’ll make a fist, I’ll make it count/And there are places I will never ever go.” Namely, anywhere near so-called civilization. The same can be said for Lucy, who eventually sees Snow for what he is: a tyrant and an asshole. And, yes, it seems appropriate that with a last name like Snow, Rodrigo should make mention of winter when she says, “Bet you thought I’d never do it/Thought it’d go over my head/I bet you figured I’d pass with the winter/Be somethin’ easy to forget/Oh, you think I’m gone ’cause I left.” But oh no, Lucy is right there, according to Rodrigo, haunting the trees—whether as a specter or through the mockingjays that parrot back Coryo calling out her name.
With Rodrigo/Lucy promising the erstwhile object of her affection that he won’t ever be able to forget her no matter how hard he tries, Swift’s influence again hovers over the song. After all, she’s always making promises like that after a jilting, e.g., “You search in every maiden’s bed for somethin’ greater, baby” (“Is It Over Now?”), “But now that we’re done and it’s over/I bet you couldn’t believe/When you realized I’m harder to forget than I was to leave/And I bet you think about me” (“I Bet You Think About Me”).
The sense of unbridled freedom that Rodrigo and Swift imbue within the protagonist whose point of view they’re embodying is also worth remarking upon. In “Carolina,” Swift details, “Carolina knows why, for years, I roam/Free as these birds, light as whispers/Carolina knows.” There’s a similar portrait drawn by Rodrigo in “Can’t Catch Me Now” when she warbles, “But I’m in the trees, I’m in the breeze/My footsteps on the ground/You’ll see my face in every place/But you can’t catch me now.” The idea is that each woman exists in nature, becoming an intrinsic part of it. So that no matter what happens, she’ll always live on “in the trees” and “in the breeze,” as Rodrigo puts it.
Indeed, there’s something Native American-spirited in a philosophy like that, also presented when Rodrigo warns, “Through wading grass, the months will pass/You’ll feel it all around/I’m here, I’m there, I’m everywhere.” Unlike Paul McCartney in “Here, There and Everywhere,” when he says, “I want her everywhere, and if she’s beside me/I know I need never care/But to love her is to need her everywhere,” Coryo isn’t liable to be as “excited” by the prospect of Lucy’s omnipresence. Regardless, as McCartney also sings (for, clearly, this song influenced Rodrigo’s lyrics), Lucy is essentially claiming, “I will be there and everywhere/Here, there and everywhere.” Just as “Can’t Catch Me Now” will be for the next few months as it climbs the charts amid reinvigorated The Hunger Games fever.
