Ballad of Rodrigo
The singer-songwriter released the latest track from prequel The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes
Olivia Rodrigo delivered “Can’t Catch Me Now” on Thursday — a song from the highly-anticipated Hunger Games prequel The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes.
Written and recorded by the Guts singer, the track features Rodrigo over intimate acoustic guitars as the melodies build to a slow crescendo and tell the story of vengeance. “There’s snow falling 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,” she taunts before diving into the chorus: “You’ll feel it all around/I’m here, I’m there, I’m evеrywhere/ But you can’t catch me now.”
The three-time Grammy Award teased the new track, which is being billed as the film’s official song, earlier this week. In an Instagram post alongside a clip capturing the budding (and doomed) romance between Lucy Gray Baird and Coriolanus Snow, Rodrigo wrote: “soooo beyond excited that I got the opportunity to write a song for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.”
The film arrives Nov. 17, and in the past, top artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay, and Lorde have provided original songs crafted specifically for the Hunger Games franchise.
Last month, Rachel Zegler unveiled a new take on fan favorite “The Hanging Tree,” which was performed by Jennifer Lawrence in 2014. Rolling Stone featured The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes on its list of 42 Must-See Movies of Fall 2023. The film aims to “pay tribute (get it?) to the concept of extending this cinematic universe at least one, if not three more times,” the publication predicts.
Filmmaker Francis Lawrence, who directed the previous Hunger Games movies Catching Fire and the two Mockingjays, helmed the film, which is an adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ most recent novel.