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Scene from the "Driver's License" video.
In California, 16-year-olds are allowed to get a driver's license.
This information is important to understand the first big international pop hit of 2021.
Because it begins with 17-year-old Olivia Rodrigo, born, raised and resident in California, singing to piano tones in a fragile voice: "I got my driver's license last week".
The song "Driver's License" was released on January 8th and quickly became a huge success, especially on Spotify: On January 11th, "Driver's License" set the record for the most streams of a non-Christmas song in one day.
The next day it was streamed more often, over 17 million times.
The Swedish streaming service now has over 150 million streams.
A direct consequence of the streaming success, which can also be seen with other services: "Driver's License" is also making a big hit in the charts.
In the USA, for example, it is right at number one, where, according to "Billboard", radio airplay is beginning to follow suit.
Olivia Rodrigo also made the jump from zero to one in Great Britain, Australia and six other countries.
The song is now in second place in the German single charts - behind the German rap duet »Ohne dich«.
Who is this Olivia Rodrigo?
Of course, such a debut cannot succeed without a history.
Following a long tradition (Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, to name just a few), Olivia Rodrigo began her show business career at Disney - first in the Disney Channel series "Bizaardvark", then more prominently in "High School Musical: Das Musical: Die Serie ", a production for the streaming service Disney + based on the popular" High School Musical "feature films.
Olivia Rodrigo plays one of the main roles in it, Nini, and a song that she contributed to the series became her first, smaller hit in early 2020: "All I Want".
This is already a piano-based ballad, but it is very well produced with the use of strings and, well, musical-like pauses, jumps and climbs.
Her first single outside of the serial cosmos is more emotionally attacked: The song's protagonist, who has just received her driver's license, drives through the suburbs where her ex lives, who left her for a blonde who was a few years older than her (»She's everything I'm insecure about «).
In the chorus she complains that he probably didn't mean what he sang about her in his song: "You said forever, now I drive alone past your street".
It is a strong basic scenario for a pop song: the driver's license is one of the modern rituals of transition to adulthood - that in this situation a love breaks that was held for eternity in teenage beliefs, creates a pain that is generally understandable and understandable, but specific enough, so as not to be a pure cliché.
And then there is a dramatic middle section in which Rodrigo's voice, now full and no longer brittle, is doubled;
it culminates in the words "I still fucking love you, baby".
US pop criticism made comparisons with Lorde and Taylor Swift.
The latter congratulated Olivia Rodrigo on Instagram on her hit, which in turn made Swift fan Rodrigo extremely upset.
"Perfect Storm"
But of course the rapid success of “Driver's License” cannot be fully explained by the star bonus and critical praise: When it was published, there was one of the moving challenges so popular on the short video network on TikTok, in which many users took part (here are some examples).
Almost two weeks after the song was released, over 800,000 TikTok videos with the sound of "Driver's License" were posted - for comparison: "Blinding Lights", the most successful pop hit of 2020, was used for 1.1 billion videos.
And then there is the gossip aspect that leads back to "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series": Fans speculate that the song is about Joshua Bassett, the male lead in the series, who in turn has been the actress Sabrina Carpenter since the summer should be in a relationship - blond and a few years older than Rodrigo.
At least Bassett also writes and sings songs, a new single came out on January 14th, entitled "Lie, Lie, Lie".
In the commentators below the YouTube video, Bassett's fans emphasize that the demo version of the song is two years old, and for that reason alone cannot be an answer to "Driver's License".
Sabrina Carpenter gave a definite musical answer this Friday: In »Skin« she speculates whether maybe »blonde« was the only possible rhyme.
A pop soap opera.
For a Spotify manager interviewed by the New York Times, the combination of the various effects in Driver's License resulted in a “perfect storm,” in this case a chain of happy circumstances.
Olivia Rodrigo was especially pleased in the same article to have seen videos in which people would have said, "I have no idea who this girl is, but I love this song."
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