Zack Bia insists that Olivia Rodrigo’s scathing breakup song “Vampire” is not about their short-lived romance.
“I don’t think it’s really about me,” the DJ said in an interview with GQ published Monday. “I think the Internet just ran with it.”
Although many of Rodrigo’s fans — and Bia’s former girlfriend Madison Beer — were quick to link Bia to some of the “Sour” singer’s shady lyrics, he claims that their relationship simply wasn’t serious enough to write songs about.
“We hung out, we’re both busy, and we ended up not furthering our relationship,” he told the outlet. “There was never any drama, you know?”
Despite claiming the pair ended things on good terms, Bia says the song may actually be about a composite character rather than one specific person — which he could have helped create.
“Look, I’m in the industry so I know how a song gets made,” he explained, before giving props to Rodrigo’s songwriting chops.
“The song’s so big and so awesome,” he continued. “Look, a heartbreak song for the summertime, it’s an undefeated formula.”
The DJ — who also inspired Beer’s breakup song “Selfish” — says he has come to terms with the fact that he won’t be able to change most people’s minds about him online.
“Any time I’ve been speculatively the subject of a song, or the focus of a TikTok trend, whether grounded in reality or not, it’s like, it’s never been up to me to address it because the scale of it is so widespread,” he told the outlet.
“100 million people have heard this song. The only thing I can address is my own life. I can control what my friends think and the creative output that I have and things like that.”
Although Bia is adamant that the hit song is not about him, social media users pointed out several lyrics that coincide with the pair’s romance — such as their seven-year age gap, the DJ’s active nightlife and the timeline of their fling.
At the beginning of the song, Rodrigo refers to the relationship as “six months of torture,” which is how long her romance with Bia lasted.
Then in the second verse, she questions why an older man would want to date someone so young before realizing that “girls your age know better.”
Bia, 27, and Rodrigo, 20, were first linked in February 2022 after a source told E! News that they had been “seeing each other.”
“Zack [feels] that Olivia is really down to earth and he loves how low-key she is,” the insider told the outlet. “It’s a good balance between them.”
However, things fizzled out between the two just over six months later.
The whirlwind romance came on the heels of Rodrigo’s relationship with Adam Faze, who fans also suspected could have inspired “Vampire.”
In July 2021, Rodrigo and Faze, 26, confirmed they were dating by sharing a steamy kiss while out and about in Los Angeles.
Yet things quickly took a turn for the worse and the pair ultimately ended their relationship by the start of 2023.
In fact, Rodrigo later cut all digital ties to her ex by unfollowing both his personal and professional accounts on Instagram.
And it looks like fans may never know which exes inspired which songs on Rodrigo’s new album as the Grammy winner recently told “The Guardian” that she “never want[s] to say who any of my songs are about.”
“I’ve never done that before in my career and probably won’t,” she told the outlet. “I think it’s better to not pigeonhole a song to being about this one thing.”
