Welcome to Sleeper Hit Support Group, a column diving into the song currently occupying the bottom spot of the Billboard Hot 100.

In a pop landscape that asks more questions that it answers, I'm setting out to answer three questions about each of these songs: how it got here, if the song is good, and where it's going. In this 100th spot we'll find unlikely ascents, falls from grace, and resurgences of hits from bygone eras.

Today, we're looking at Olivia Rodrigo's first-ever recorded collaboration, "what's wrong with me" with The Cure's Robert Smith. This was #100 several weeks ago, and we didn't cover that original instance, but it's back in that spot with more distance from the last time this column covered Rodrigo.

How did it get here?

This is the second song from you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love to be covered in this column, so you can read more about the record's rollout here. We're keeping things relatively brief today, looking at the fate that brought these two voices of their respective generations together, and what Olivia's been up to these past couple months.

More than any other working pop star, Olivia Rodrigo most convincingly positions herself as a musician's musician. She goes out of her way to tell Kathleen Hanna's daughter that her mom is her hero. She isn't afraid to admit she's a Pinkerton girl. Her Lilith Fair-inspired festival Daisy Chain Fields hosted promising up-and-comers like Quiet Light and Die Spitz alongside riot grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill and The Breeders.

References to and respect for her elders has been apart of the ORod playbook since the start. The most vivid lyric on SOUR's second single, the dreamy slow-burn "deja vu," details when her ex would tell her "I love you" between the chorus and the verse of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl." So when it was time to organize the first feature of her discography, Robert Smith is a no-brainer accoutrement to yspsfagsil considering how much of a touchpoint The Cure was for the record's sonic palette.

Rodrigo recalls the inclusion of Smith:

“I brought him this song, and he’s just incredible. I think when he sent us back the like his vocals in the chorus, like the first time the chorus came in, I was like, ‘Oh my god’. Just the way that it elevates that song and the way that it blends together almost brought me to tears. I thought it was so beautiful, and hearing him sing something that I had written was just so wild.”

The respect goes both ways, with Smith having this to say about Rodrigo:

"She’s so good, I mean, she is genuinely fantastic as a songwriter and as a singer, as a performer, and the band, everything about it. I genuinely love what she does. I am slightly in awe of how easy she finds it all. It’s not really comparable to how I do things. [At] 23 you’ve got a lot more energy than someone of my age, but it just comes across as very effortless. Very natural. And I’m not really a natural performer. When I write songs, I’m writing for a very specific reason. I agonize, to be honest, a lot of the time in later life, and she’s just banging it out and saying, 'What do you think of this?' That’s great.”

Is the song any good?

Most days in the couple months since yspsfagsil released, I've had "what's wrong with me" and "maggots for brains" stuck in my head. Maybe it's because I've been relating to it lately, but there's something about every melodic choice on "what's wrong with me" that drills itself into my brain with little room for escape. The song's chorus in particular is just bulletproof. The debilitation that comes with realizing your relationship isn't working is described succinctly and incisively: "Went to the doctor and she said I was fine / But every movie that I see makes me cry / It's like somebody put a weight on my chest / I should talk to a friend, but I can't get out of bed."

The vocal chemistry between the 23-year-old Rodrigo and the 67-year-old Smith works in a way where neither of them outshine each other. Smith's voice, while on the higher side for a typical male rock singer, sits as this regal warble while the airiness Rodrigo equips sits neatly above it.

The production on "what's wrong with me" is certainly among the tamer cuts of the record, but the songwriting does a lot of the heavy lifting on its own. The synths that sound like an amber alert during the bridge is really what sells it for me, though. It's an incredible touch that is subtle enough to not come off gauche.

Where is it going?

Rodrigo kicked off The Unraveled Tour this past weekend in Hartford, CT, and "what's wrong with me" is the only song from yspsfagsil to be left off the setlist. That's certainly not an indictment of its popularity, though; it's just hard to recapture the exigence of a duet on your own. I would say this about almost any song on this record, but "what's wrong with me" is the kind of song that has potential for immense longevity. There is a reason it remains on the chart more than three months post-release.

Rodrigo will be continuing her victory lap throughout the fall and winter as her tour continues. If luck allows, I hope to be able to bear witness.