FEATURE: Life in the Fast Lane: The Success of Olivia Rodrigo and drivers license

FEATURE:

 

 

Life in the Fast Lane

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 PHOTO CREDIT: Universal Music/Erica Hernandez

The Success of Olivia Rodrigo and drivers license

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YOU get these songs that come about…

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 PHOTO CREDIT: Universal Music/Erica Hernandez

every few years that take the charts by storm or get a load of media attention. There does seem to be a division between the biggest mainstream stars and those underground artists. Some would say that the latter produces more enduring music - and they warrant more attention. I do think that there is too much focus on the biggest Pop stars and not enough on those smaller acts whose music is more original and stirring. In the case of Olivia Rodrigo, she has sort of come from nowhere with the success of drivers license. As much as I hate the lower-case lettering and the lack of appropriate punctuation in the title (so there is an apostrophe after the ‘r’ in ‘drivers’), one cannot argue against the popularity and success of her new hit. Music Week reported on a huge chart success:

A week free of any suitably heavyweight challengers means Olivia Rodrigo strolls comfortably to a seventh consecutive week at No.1. Drivers License has now enjoyed the longest uninterrupted run at the top of the charts since Dance Monkey's 11-week spell at the end of 2019.  A further 46,404 chart sales (44,533 from streams) mean the American teenager's cumulative sales to date top half a million for the first time”.

It might be cynical to suggest that the absence of big acts releasing singles is the reason for her success. Maybe she would not be at the top of the charts if there was a big challenge, but drivers license has resonated and is a modern Pop gem. I am interested to see what comes next for the American actress and singer. I am going to wrap this up fairly soon, but it is worth bringing in a couple of features/interviews.

I will end with an NME interview Rodrigo conducted. Before then, The Independent looked inside a modern Pop smash hit:

Olivia Rodrigo is one of the biggest success stories of 2021 so far, after her first single debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In many ways, Rodrigo is your average 17-year-old. She makes music, fangirls over Taylor Swift and spends a lot of her time on TikTok.

She even spent her teenage years writing One Direction fan fiction, something she told Official Big Top 40 was “embarrassing” when she became friends with Niall Horan.

If that provides any clue as to Rodrigo’s rapid rise from unknown teenager to pop sensation, there’s also her debut single “Drivers License”, which is currently the biggest song in the world.

But why is “Drivers License” so big? Well, that’s partly to do with the alleged story behind the song, which has been widely speculated upon by users of TikTok.

The song and video follow Rodrigo as she drives around a suburban neighbourhood after receiving her driving license, something she was encouraged to do by the real-life subject of the song.

However, the song seems to suggest that Rodrigo’s love interest has since moved on, as the lyrics go: “You’re probably with that blonde girl / Who always made me doubt / She’s so much older than me”.

We will have to see how long drivers license remains road-worthy in the charts and whether it is a one-off success for Olivia Rodrigo. I feel she has the momentum to release more successful singles. Maybe she will not rise to the same levels as artists like Dua Lipa and Taylor Swift, but drivers license has put her in the fast lane. In this NME interview, Rodrigo discusses the creation of drivers license and how she has reacted to its massive success:

The response to ‘Drivers License’ has been, quite simply, ridiculous. What was it like to smash all these records?

“It’s absolutely surreal, I truly don’t feel like my brain can process all of it, I see all the numbers, but it doesn’t really sink in totally, I’m sort of in a state of disbelief. But the craziest thing to me is also seeing the song being heard in real life. People send me videos of them driving and they get to a stoplight and the person next to them is blasting ‘Drivers License’ in their car, and I’ve got a couple of videos of people who’ll be on walks around their neighbourhood and a specific house will be blasting ‘Drivers License’ through the windows!”

Tell us about writing ‘Drivers License’ – how long did it take to write?

“I wrote the verses and the chorus in an hour. I was in in my living room, and it was a really emotional, cathartic experience for me. I wrote it, and I remember putting my head down on the keys and crying as it was so emotional, and it really evoked that reaction out of me. Then I took it to my producer Dan Nigro, who’s an incredible songwriter and we collaborate a lot. I was like, ‘What do you think about this? I think it’s a really great song that I wrote.’ And Dan is very hard to please ­– if I play a song he doesn’t like he’s like, ‘I don’t like it, write a better one!’ So when I took it to him and he really loved it, I knew that it was something special. We then wrote the bridge together and fixed up some of the verses and the chorus, and polished it up together, and he put his master production on it and there you have it.”

Were there any musical touchstones or artists who inspired it?

“I was super inspired by Gracie Abrams when I was writing the song. Before I sat down to write ‘Drivers License’ I was driving around listening to her EP ‘Minor’, and it’s all these break-up songs about a relationship and I was just crying to her EP. When I got home, I had all these emotions bottled up, and it brought up all these knots I’d been trying to push down for a long time, and so she definitely inspired me to write this song. And I think some of the production is sort of referenced a little bit in my song too”.

I shall leave it there, but I wanted to react to the huge popularity of drivers license. As of the time of writing this (4th March) the song was still at the top of the charts – that could all change by the time this is published. Whether you like the song or not, one cannot argue that there is something about it that has struck people and impacted them. From the success and record-breaking smash of drivers license, it will be interesting to see…

WHAT comes next for the new Pop sensation.