Olivia Rodrigo is Driving Up the Charts
By: Mallory Johnson
On January 8th, 2021, seventeen-year-old Olivia Rodrigo released her debut single called driver’s license, along with a stunning music video for the emotional song. At the time, Olivia had no idea how record breaking this song would be. The song is one of my current favorite songs, and I know that I am not the only one who can say that, as the song is everywhere.
It has debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, broke Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music streaming records, and has gotten radio airplay. Olivia posted an emotional video on Instagram of her reaction to hearing her song on the radio for the first time. driver’s license is also very popular on the app TikTok, with people posting covers of it, rewrites of different perspectives, and more. The song is believed to be about Olivia’s ex-boyfriend and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series costar Joshua Bassett, with a speculated reference to Sabrina Carpenter with the lines “I guess you’re with that blonde girl/who always made me doubt/She’s so much older than me/She’s everything I’m insecure about.” It has not been confirmed by Olivia that the song is about Joshua Bassett or references Sabrina Carpenter; it is just fan speculation.
Olivia is a huge Taylor Swift fan, and you can hear that when you listen to the powerful bridge in this song. Taylor commented on one of Olivia’s Instagram posts about the song, and Olivia freaked out. Other celebrities that have discussed driver’s license are Halsey and Niall Horan. Halsey talked about how much she loved the song on an Instagram livestream, tweeted about it, and then sent Olivia a congratulatory cake, and Niall posted a screenshot of him listening to it on his Instagram story, which Olivia reposted.
I highly recommend listening to this song if you have not already. There is an explicit version and a clean version. My favorite lines in the song are, “Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me/Cuz you said forever now I drive alone past your street.”