Songfacts®:

• Olivia Rodrigo recorded "Can't Catch Me Now" for the dystopian science fiction action film The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. It's the fifth installment in The Hunger Games film series.
  
  The film is based on the 2020 novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. A prequel set 64 years before Katniss Everdeen volunteered as tribute, its plot traces the rise of Panem's tyrant-in-the-making, Coriolanus Snow, and his fateful entanglement with Hunger Games tribute Lucy Gray Baird during the 10th Hunger Games.
• "Can't Catch Me Now" tells the haunting story of vengeful retribution from the point of view of Lucy Gray Baird.
  
  I'm here, I'm there, I'm everywhere
  But you can't catch me now
  
  Lucy Gray, the elusive force, will leave a lasting mark on Snow.
• Rodrigo wrote the somber folk-rock ballad with her producer, Daniel Nigro. The song was released on November 3, 2023, as the official soundtrack single for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
• Nigro played guitar, keyboards, bass, mellotron; Paul Cartwright conducted the string arrangement and plays viola and violin; and Missouri singer-songwriter Chappell Roan sang the background vocals.
  
  Paul Cartwright and Chappell Roan both worked on Rodrigo's Guts album, released a couple of months before "Can't Catch Me Now." Cartwright played violin and viola on "Vampire" and "Teenage Dream"; Roan sang backing vocals on "Lacy."
• The Leonn Ward-directed music video starts with Rodrigo playing guitar and singing the song in an isolated cabin before sprinting through a green field. The visual is interspersed with clips from the film.
  
  Leon Ward also shot the video for English singer-songwriter Celeste's "Stop This Flame."
• For Rodrigo, writing "Can't Catch Me Now" was more difficult than writing the songs on Sour and Guts. "It was a really fun challenge for me as a songwriter, because lots of my songs are kind of about my personal life," she told Entertainment Tonight. "Very diaristic and confessional."
  
  "It was a wonderful experience to try to write something from the character of Lucy Gray," Rodrigo continued. "A character that I feel very connected to."