17-year-old Olivia Rodrigo has been known for her acting in Disney shows such as “Bizaaardvark” and more recently “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” (HSMTMTS) on Disney+. In the show, she showed off her singing and songwriting capabilities, most popularly from the song “All I Want” that she wrote for and sang in the show.
On Friday, Jan. 8, Rodrigo released her debut single, “Drivers License,” along with a music video. Over the weekend, the song hit No.1 on Spotify’s US Chart, Apple Music’s overall track chart, and Amazon Music’s overall top songs chart. The song later reached No.1 on Spotify’s Top 50 global playlist.
Rodrigo's song has continued to grow, and broke a Spotify record on Jan. 11 for having the most single-day streams for a song written by a female artist in the US. The music video she released for the song has also surpassed 15 million views on YouTube.
People on TikTok have also been raving over the song, and have been speculating on who the song is about. Many believe that it is about Rodrigo's co-star from HSMTMTS, Joshua Bassett. The two never publicly dated, but many fans believe that the two were an item at one point. Bassett seemed to have moved on and began dating Sabrina Carpenter, another actress that appears on many Disney shows.
Fans believe that the lyric “and you’re probably with that blonde girl,” is referring to Carpenter and her blonde hair. However, this is all just speculation, and Rodrigo, Bassett, or Carpenter have not said anything about the rumors.
More recently, the song broke the record for most single-day Spotify streams of any other song by any artist, male or female. “Drivers License” received 6,145,601 streams on Jan. 12, breaking the previous record by almost 400,000 streams, set by Drake in 2018.
Rodrigo has even been recognized by Taylor Swift on her Instagram. Rodrigo posted a picture of her song No.3 on iTunes charts, underneath two of Swift's newly released songs, with the caption “next to taylor on the us i tunes chart im in a puddle of tears.” Swift commented on the post saying “I say that's my baby and I’m really proud.”
Rodrigo's following has continued to grow throughout the week since her song was released, and fans are hoping and waiting for more music to come.