On the heels of releasing both You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love and her The Handmaid’s Tale-themed “Serena Joy,” Olivia Rodrigo’s decision to put out a Christmas song was always going to be a bit dicey. But perhaps no one could have known just how dicey until “take me home (4 christmas)” actually came out. Teasing the single on November 2nd with a clip of Ben Marshall and Cynthia Nixon, among others, playing a game of Who Am I? (a.k.a. Celebrity) while wearing the paper crowns that have been associated with the British at Christmas ever since the early 1900s, those gathered around the fire and Christmas tree try to guess the name of the famous person scrawled across their forehead. For everyone in the room, that famous person happens to be Olivia Rodrigo. And it’s Nixon who asks the question (in order to get a clue as to the famous person’s identity), “Am I a president?” Someone offscreen answers, “I wish.”
To be sure, Rodrigo has certainly partaken of more meaningful political action this year than the current president. This alone with the establishment of her Daisy Chain Fields Festival (inspired by the Lilith Fair), which featured a lineup of all-female musicians who agreed to perform for free, allowing one hundred percent of the proceeds from ticket sales to go to organizations like National Domestic Workers Alliance, Planned Parenthood, Center for Reproductive Rights and National Women’s Law Center. “Serena Joy” was released in the week leading up to the festival to raise further funds for the charities in support of women’s rights (especially their reproductive rights). So yes, to follow up a year of highs both on the creative and activism fronts with a Christmas single that’s supposed to be “pure fun” isn’t necessarily the best way for Rodrigo to have ended her successful 2026 (complete with another world tour, The Unraveled Tour).
Nonetheless, as she explained to her followers on Instagram, “I wrote this song with Dan Nigro and Amy Allen last summer and I’m so happy it’s finally close to Christmastime so I can share it with you guys lol!” This would have also been during the writing process for You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, which is probably why it has shades of a single like “expectations” (a track that Rodrigo recently released a “remix” of with Chappell Roan, along with a game show-themed video). Particularly with Rodrigo demanding better/“more” of her boyfriend by declaring her only wish this year (yes, a nod to Britney Spears’ lone Christmas song) is to be introduced to his parents during the oh so weighty setting of Christmas at his house. Perhaps subconsciously realizing how “retro” this sentiment actually sounds, Rodrigo offers a definite 80s sound to the song (think: Dexys Midnight Runners or The Waitresses’ own 1981 Xmas ditty, “Christmas Wrapping” [later covered by the Spice Girls]).
There’s even an “80s vibe” to the accompanying video in terms of Rodrigo picking up the wreckage of a ribald party from the night before (you know, the kind that only Charli XCX throws nowadays—and on that note, this could easily be a scene soundtracked to “party 4 u”). This done as her boyfriend, played by Please Don’t Destroy’s Ben Marshall, continues to sleep on the couch without a care in the world. Least of all whether or not Rodrigo wants to meet his parents. Another guy (presumably a friend of somebody’s) is also asleep on the floor, immune to the sounds of Rodrigo depositing empty beer cans and bottles into a trash bag. As for the residual decorations that indicate the “theme” of the party, it looks as much like it could have been a New Year’s one as a “holiday season” one. But either way, Rodrigo is sick of waiting around for her boyfriend to tend to her emotional needs (and probably her physical ones, to boot)—and might not spend another year doing so if he can’t get it together.
Commencing with the lines, “It’s the third time this week we’ve been to this bar” and “We’re three beers deep, and they’re closing in ten,” Rodrigo takes us back to the imagery of “drop dead” when she sings, “I know the bar closes at eleven/But I hope you never finish that beer.” Clearly, a large part of her time with Louis Partridge must have been spent in bars and drinking beer (he is a Brit, after all). For it’s no secret that it was he who inspired You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. Specifically, how limerence can lead one to believe that the initial high of their romantic infatuation-turned-obsession with another person couldn’t possibly allow for such a low after the crash. As she told Vogue Philippines, the record is about “the double-edged sword of something like limerence, where it’s obviously so static and so happy but also so nauseating and kind of miserable, I think that was honestly one of the main points that I was trying to touch on in the album. I think that’s why I love the title… because with something like limerence, there’s always [a] more negative, insane side to the love that you’re feeling.”
And that “insane side” is something that also shines through in Rodrigo’s first original Christmas song. One that, like “maggots for brains,” also feels slightly inspired by Sex and the City (much like Gracie Abrams’ recent single, “Here You Come, There You Go”). Except, rather than taking a line of dialogue from Miranda Hobbes and incorporating it into the lyrics, “Everything that’s funny I wish I could tell to him,” she seems instead to be channeling Carrie Bradshaw’s “needy” personality overall with a chorus like, “And I’ve been waiting a really long time/I want you to take me home and not so we can make out/I want you to take me home/Take me home to your parents’ house/I want you to take me home/Show me serious commitment.”
Indeed, during the Madison Square Garden date of her Guts Tour, Rodrigo sported a shirt that read, “Carrie Bradshaw AF.” And she’s definitely giving off that energy with her desire for her “beloved” to prove how serious he is about her by introducing her to the fam (it’s giving Carrie forcing a meeting with Big’s mother at church in the season one finale, “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”). But the SATC connection really ramps up with Rodrigo enlisting her “favorite canonical redheads” (as she put it). Which includes not only Ben Marshall, but of course, Cynthia Nixon, who essentially invoked this video appearance by posting a clip of herself dancing in the kitchen to “drivers license” not long after Rodrigo announced on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, “It’s my favorite show, I love Sex and the City. I think I’ve watched, like, every episode maybe three times” (which is, frankly, a child’s play amount of times). This after also telling him that she had a song on the album that was written in response to Miranda’s exchange with Steve in the season two finale, “Ex and the City.”
And so, interweaving “Miranda” into her Carrie Bradshaw narrative makes the concept for the video feel slightly less British Christmas movie-meets-The Family Stone (however, for added meta effect, “Carrie Bradshaw” a.k.a. Sarah Jessica Parker is the one being taken to meet the parents in that movie). Though, of course, there’s a wholesomeness to it that could only be the result of a fantasy, which is exactly what Rodrigo is having after she sits down defeatedly on the couch next to her sleeping boyfriend upon growing weary of being a one-woman cleanup crew. And in her perfect fantasy, she is greeted at the door by a warm and inviting would-be mother-in-law in the form of Nixon. Who, as Miranda in her And Just Like That… era, would have probably much preferred her son (incidentally, Ben Marshall is a bang-up casting choice to play an older version of Brady Hobbes) to bring home Rodrigo in lieu of Mia (played by another nepo baby, Ella Stiller), the girl he gets pregnant.
In any case, some decidedly Norman Rockwell-esque scenarios ensue (including, most notably, a tableau that echoes his famous painting, Freedom from Want). But Rodrigo’s fantasy isn’t so unrealistic that she can envision Marshall being capable of actually chopping wood. Instead, she gives herself that honor, standing next to a tree and looking capable with an axe in an image that recalls an alternate cover for You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love wherein she stands next to a tree ominously holding a knife (to indicate she’s the one who’s carved the words of her album title into it) or she stands next to it holding a chainsaw.
Elsewhere, she decorates a gingerbread house, poses for photos with the family while making “goofy” faces along with them, gets her makeup questionably done by her boyfriend’s younger sister, plays a game of charades (while also wearing one of those British paper crowns, which, again, seems like an “Easter egg” pertaining to Partridge) and, for all intents and purposes, paints an “idyllic” portrait of what it would mean to be a daughter-in-law (“I’d be the coolest in-law daughter,” she assures), to have a “good” relationship with one’s parents-in-law (so, in short, it’s the opposite concept of every installment of Meet the Parents).
Alas, her fantasy of how her boyfriend would fall asleep after all the merrymaking at his parents’ house gives way to the reality of him continuing to doze the day away as she’s stuck with cleaning their apartment, back there sitting on the couch again and remembering it was all a (day)dream. To ease her woes, she pulls the still slightly full beer he’s gripping out of his hand and takes a sip for herself. It seems, quite literally, the very least he can offer her this holiday season. Which is probably all the more reason she should, in the immortal t-shirt of Britney Spears, “Dump Him.”
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