Singer Olivia Rodrigo paid a fan's last semester of college tuition

Olivia Rodrigo paid for a fan's final semester of college and said nothing about it publicly. The fan, Jamie Causey, told the story herself this week, after graduating from the University of Alabama.

Causey, a content creator, said the two first crossed paths when Rodrigo came across one of her birthday videos and left a comment. She later posted about being a first-generation student and about the cost of that last semester, which she said was not a request for money or pity.

Rodrigo messaged her privately anyway. Causey shared a screenshot of the singer asking whether she could send money through Venmo, and a follow-up message from Rodrigo's representative put the figure at $5,000, which NME converted to 3,687 pounds.

"You made me feel like I belong on this platform," Causey said in the video, telling Rodrigo she owed her nothing. She had kept the whole thing quiet, she said, because she did not want something that meant that much to her to turn into a public spectacle. She thanked other people who had backed her online, Paris Hilton among them, and asked viewers to do small things for strangers.

Rodrigo released her third album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, in June. She headlines the first Daisy Chain Fields festival in Irvine, California on August 29, an all-women bill that also carries Chappell Roan, Doechii and Bikini Kill, and her Unraveled Tour starts in late September and reaches The O2 in London in April.

Under pop here we covered her surprise Brooklyn set and the Bandcamp page that followed it, and the stage times Daisy Chain Fields set so that no two sets clash. That Brooklyn show was at Warsaw, one of a handful of recent appearances that also took in Lollapalooza, where she turned up with the Smashing Pumpkins.