Baby Queen says she was 'ready to quit' music before Olivia Rodrigo asked her to join the 'Sour' tour

• Baby Queen recently spoke to Insider about her "lovely" friend Olivia Rodrigo.
• The 24-year-old indie-pop star will open for Rodrigo on her "Sour" tour in Europe this summer.

Baby Queen says a phone call from Olivia Rodrigo helped save her budding music career.

The London-based singer-songwriter will open for Rodrigo this summer on the European leg of her "Sour" tour, which officially launched in Portland on Tuesday.

"I was actually going through the worst fucking time of my life when my agent messaged me saying, 'We just got a message from Olivia to see if you're available to tour in the summer,'" Baby Queen told Insider last month, backstage at Baby's All Right in Brooklyn for her first-ever gig in the US.

"I was ready to quit. I was like, 'I fucking hate this.' I was in such a bad place, and then that came through," she continued. "It's amazing because she can take whoever she wants on tour. She can take a much bigger artist. It's just a crazy fucking opportunity."

Baby Queen, whose real name is Bella Latham, first connected with Rodrigo in 2020, shortly after the release of the former's debut single "Internet Religion." Rodrigo took a screenshot of the song and shared it on her Instagram story.

This was nearly one year before Rodrigo would burst onto mainstream radars with "Drivers License" in 2021, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks and recently earned a Grammy Award for best pop solo performance.

"My label gave her my number and we were texting a little bit and she was like, 'I'm releasing this song. I'm so nervous,'" Baby Queen revealed. "And I was like, 'Don't be scared. It's going to be fine.' And then 'Driver's License' came out, and I was like, 'Bitch, what the fuck!'"

"It was crazy," she added. "But she's always been so lovely."

Rodrigo's debut album "Sour," released to massive critical acclaim last May, shares many of the same themes found in Baby Queen's signature brand of precocious pop-rock.

In particular, "Jealousy, Jealousy" and "Brutal" recall early Baby Queen hits like "Pretty Girl Lie" and "Buzzkill," which Insider named one of the best songs of 2020.

"It's really clear, listening to someone's music, when you're a similar type of person," Baby Queen said. "Like when I listened to that 'Sour' record, there were a lot of songs on there that I was like, that could have come out of my studio. And she probably feels the same way about certain songs, so it's really cool."

Baby Queen said she's most excited to play "Want Me" for Rodrigo's crowd, a song that happens to be cosigned by the Grammy winner herself.

While Rodrigo's lovesick music is based on true events, Baby Queen's unrequited-love anthem was actually inspired by her crush on "Killing Eve" star Jodie Comer.

"I'm begging for somebody to break my heart at this point," she told Insider. "Right now I'm writing songs about smoking weed and being lazy — social commentaries — and that's exactly the place I was in when I wrote 'Internet Religion.'"

"Thank fuck I watched 'Killing Eve' and fancied Jodie Comer!" she continued. "Thank fuck for that period of my life when I felt something. Got that banger out of it. Can you imagine if I felt that for a prolonged period of time, what I'd be able to make?"

In November, Baby Queen released her latest single "Wannabe," a cheeky homage to Beck's "Loser" and feeling like a misfit. It's the lead single for her forthcoming album, which she described as being comprised of "'90s stoner anthems" with a Gen-Z edge.

"Initially, it was a super-pop record, like Taylor Swift's '1989.' But I was feeling disconnected from the songs I was making," she explained. "And then I wrote 'Wannabe,' and that sort of set a new precedent for me because I was like, 'This feels right.'"

She and Rodrigo will kick off their "Sour" tour leg in Hamburg, Germany on June 11.

Listen to "Wannabe" and more on Spotify with Insider's rising artist radio.