Olivia Rodrigo said on June 4 that she is about 60% deaf in her left ear, turning a private hearing issue she has lived with since childhood into a very public detail. The 23-year-old said on a KISS FM UK radio appearance that if someone sat on her left side and tried to tell her a secret, she would not be able to make it out.
That disclosure is drawing attention now because Rodrigo tied it to a joke, her new music and a limitation she has carried for years. “There’s quite a lot that’s wrong with me,” she said, before adding, “I’m actually like, 60% deaf in my left ear.” She made the remark while discussing her song “what’s wrong with me” from her third album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” giving the line a sharper edge than a casual aside would normally carry.
Rodrigo has been talking about the issue since 2023, when she said she did not really know until kindergarten or so, during hearing tests for children, that she was a little hard of hearing. She also said at the time that the condition was unusual. The singer has since treated it with the kind of dark humor that often runs through her interviews, even joking that if anyone wants to tell her a secret, they should use her right ear.
That blend of humor and candor is what makes the revelation land. Rodrigo did not describe a dramatic new diagnosis or a recent setback. She described a longstanding part of her life, one that affects everyday conversation in a way fans can picture immediately. Her hearing loss is specific enough to measure, but the cause was not explained, and there is no medical update or treatment plan attached to the disclosure. For now, the most concrete thing she has offered is the workaround: if the secret matters, go right ear.
She also said she and photographer Petra Collins joke that Rodrigo makes music because she has bad hearing, while Collins takes photos because she has bad vision. It is a neat line, but it also underlines the point underneath the joke: Rodrigo is not presenting herself as an exception or a cautionary tale. She is naming a limitation, folding it into her work and leaving the unanswered question where it is — what, exactly, caused it in the first place.
