Zack Bia has heard all the rumors and innuendo suggesting that ex-girlfriend Olivia Rodrigo‘s slashing GUTS single, “Vampire” is about a former real-life boyfriend, likely him. “I don’t think it’s really about me,” the DJ and Field Trip Recordings label co-founder told GQ magazine. “I think the internet just ran with it.”
The 27-year-old who is acting a pre-show DJ hype man for Drake’s current North American tour said he believes “Vampire” is probably a fictional composite character, which is another reason he’s not sweating the heated rhetoric. “Look, I’m in the industry so I know how a song gets made,” said Bia, “firmly denying” that the couple’s six month 2022 relationship was even worthy of such a lacerating breakup banger. “We hung out, we’re both busy, and we ended up not furthering our relationship. There was never any drama, you know?”
With a chorus that includes the lyrics: “I used to think I was smart/ But you made me look so naive/ The way you sold me for parts/ As you sunk your teeth into me, oh/ Bloodsucker, fame f–ker /Bleedin’ me dry like a goddamn vampire,” the track from Rodrigo, 20, pulls no punches about the heartache caused by… someone.
It’s worth noting that the song seems to suggest a dalliance with an older man (“Went for me and not her/ ‘Cause girls your age know better”), and even hints at the time frame in question (“Six months of torture you sold as some forbidden paradise.”) To be fair, the internet also thought “Vampire” might be about another older man, producer Adam Faze, who Rodrigo dated when she was 18; she was 19 when she dated Bia, from around April-August 2022.
GQ said it spoke to an unnamed source in Rodrigo’s songwriting camp about Bia’s suggestion that the songs wasn’t him and their response was “I don’t know if that’s exactly true.”
If it isn’t about him, why didn’t Bia — who was also reportedly the subject of the scathing 2019 Madison Beer song “Selfish” — try to knock down all that TikTok speculation that he was the bloodsucker in question? “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,” Bia said. “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.”
Thinking of the song from a label exec perspective, Bia said at the end of the day, “Vampire” is just undeniable, which is all that matters. “Look, the momentum of a song is so special,” he said. “I think Olivia is a generational songwriter. I think she’s a generational talent. I’m always just proud of her continued accomplishments.”
In fact, Bia said he kind of digs the track that debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July; GUTS debuts at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart dated Sept. 23. “The song’s so big and so awesome,” he said. “Look, a heartbreak song for the summertime, it’s an undefeated formula.”
