Olivia Rodrigo has been leaving Cure references in her songs for months. At Primavera Sound in Barcelona, she finally brought the evidence onstage.
During her surprise set at the festival, Rodrigo teased what she called her first collaboration, then let the tension build before Robert Smith walked out to sing the second verse of “What’s Wrong With Me,” a song from her third album, as Rolling Stone described it. Nobody in the crowd had been told. “It’s my first collaboration!” she told them. The ballad, which Billboard says Smith joined to give it “a proper live debut,” trades lines like “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep / I think you’re what’s wrong with me.”
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The next day, Rodrigo sent fans a handwritten letter through her email subscription service, and it read like the thank-you note of someone still processing it. “It’s the first feature I’ve ever done on an album and I actually cannot believe I got to do it with Robert Smith!” she wrote, per Billboard.
Robert has been soundtracking my life for as long as I can remember. He has written some of my favorite songs of all time.
Olivia Rodrigo, in a letter to fans, Billboard
The pairing is the payoff of a long setup. The lead single, “Drop Dead,” reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 and nods to The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” The second single is simply called “The Cure.” “What’s Wrong With Me” completes the trifecta on the album, which arrives Friday, June 12, and has Smith as its only guest. Rodrigo and Smith also shared a stage at Glastonbury last July, when she called him “probably the best songwriter to come out of England!”
It matters because Smith almost never does this. Rolling Stone counts only a select handful of collaborations over the years, with acts such as Chvrches, Gorillaz and Crystal Castles, and notes he rarely gives public co-signs like this one. The Cure had headlined the festival the night before, in their first show since Songs of a Lost World.
Primavera has had a dramatic week: storms shut down its opening night days earlier, and Rodrigo's surprise set became the weekend's talking point. It also came with a release date attached. The album arrives Friday on Geffen, and both its singles already have The Cure in their DNA.
You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in LoveOlivia RodrigoListen on Apple Music
Read more: the best albums of 2026 so far, which Rodrigo’s record turned up on, and her songs on the midyear singles list.
Sources
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
