Faith Miller
On Jan. 8, Olivia Rodrigo released her now hit song “Drivers License,” not knowing the impact it would soon have on the world and music industry.
The story of the song is a simple, yet relatable one. The seventeen-year-old artist tells the story of the occasion of receiving her driver’s license, something she used to discuss celebrating with her now ex-boyfriend. She goes on to talk about a blonde that is older than her who he is now with and she was everything Rodrigo is “insecure” about. To deal with her pain, she drives through the suburbs past his house as a method of getting over him.
The song has now become an anthem for young adults everywhere dealing with similar situations and heartbreak. A Rolling Stone article by Brittany Spanos, it discusses Rodrigo’s ability to “create something moving and relatable” and through the “unique specificity of her storytelling’” it doesn’t cause one to feel like they are watching “a movie of her life play out in your earbuds.”
Since its release, the song has found lots of success and broke multiple records, along with already being discussed as a contender for “Song of the Year.” One of the most prominent records it has broken is setting the record for being the most “non-holiday” song streamed in a day.
On Jan. 11, “Drivers License” set the Spotify record for most streams in a day for a non-holiday song. On Jan. 12, the song “continued to beat its own record” Spotify posted on Twitter.
It was recorded by “Billboard” that the song had over 15.17 million streams on Jan. 11 and then over 17.01 million on Jan. 12.
Spotify’s Global Hits lead Becky Bass told Billboard that she believes the situation to be a sort of “perfect storm.”
“When we were talking about the audience that she had prior to the release — that’s a very young, female, engaged audience,” Bass said. “So they really sort of sparked the flame. But now what you have is [the song] traveling well beyond that audience. And obviously social media platforms have helped that, but I think just word of mouth. This is a song you’re talking about with everyone right now. Everyone’s listening to it, everyone’s obsessing over it.”
Rodrigo began her entertainment career and established a fanbase a few years ago through the Disney Channel show, “Bizaardvark,” a show about two young video creators and their friends who post their videos through a YouTube-style platform. She then went on to star on the Disney+ original show, “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,” where she collaborated on some songs for her character and a few others with her co-star, Joshua Bassett, whom “Driver’s License” is rumored to be about.
The song has also reached No. 1 on numerous charts, including The U.S. and Global Top 50 on Spotify.
