The music industry’s first hit single of the year is both a time-tested model – a Disney actress turning to pop with a captivating and confessional break-up ballad – and also an unprecedented hit from the TikTok era by a teenager.
“Driver’s license”, by Olivia Rodrigo, 17, debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart on Tuesday, after a record week on streaming services like Spotify and Amazon Music. Along the way, the autobiographical song sparked speculation in the tabloids and on social media, while listeners tried to bring together the parallels of real life as if it were a track by Rodrigo’s hero, Taylor Swift. TikTok videos led to blog posts, which generated streams, which led to news articles, and vice versa. The feedback loop made it unbeatable.
“It was the craziest week of my life,” said Rodrigo, who actually got his driver’s license last year, in an interview. “My entire life changed in an instant.”
In an unstable and uncertain time for the music business, amid a pandemic and civil unrest, “Driver’s License” was released on various platforms and with a melancholic music video on January 8 by Geffen Records. The song was then broadcast over 76.1 million times in the United States during the week, according to Billboard, the highest total since “WAP”, by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, in August (93 million). On Spotify, “Driver’s License” set a daily record for global non-holiday music streams on January 11, and hit his own number the next day, finally setting the service record for most broadcasts in a week worldwide.
The track reached number one in 48 countries on Apple Music, 31 countries on Spotify and 14 countries on YouTube, Rodrigo’s label said. It also sold 38,000 downloads in the United States, the week’s high, and gained 8.1 million radio airplay audience impressions, Billboard reported.
“We definitely had no idea how big it would be,” said Jeremy Erlich, Spotify’s music co-director. “He just grew up with this monster, unlike anything I’ve seen before. And I think it’s unlike anything anyone has seen before. “
The company, which accounted for more than 60 percent of global music broadcasts in its first week, responded to the initial interest by increasing the track’s promotion, which is now on 150 official Spotify playlists. “It’s definitely not slowing down,” said Erlich. “It is the subject around the company and the sector.”
The song, written by Rodrigo and produced by Dan Nigro, starts very straight: “I got my driver’s license last week”, Rodrigo sings about a basic piano part, “exactly as we always talk”. But, at the end of the first verse, she is “crying in the suburbs”, and the music grows to a cathartic bridge that hits with a curse word that breaks the font. The song “successfully balances a dark but clear melodrama, with a bold melody, a soft singing with clear images,” wrote critic Jon Caramanica. “It is, in every way, a modern and successful pop song.”
“Driver’s license” may represent Rodrigo’s debut as a solo artist, but she came with an embedded audience thanks to her roles at Disney. Born and raised in Southern California, she became a regular talent show at age 8 and was chosen for the first time on “Bizaardvark”, which aired for three seasons on the Disney Channel between 2016 and 2019. Rodrigo, who learned to play guitar for the role, starred as Paige Olvera, a teenager who makes music and videos for an online content studio.
She currently stars as Nini Salazar-Roberts on the Disney + series “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.” Last year, a song by Rodrigo, “All I Want”, became the most successful track of the show so far.
But like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato before her – and Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera before them – Rodrigo took his experiences inside the Disney machine and tried to translate them to a wider and adult audience. Fans speculated that “Driver’s License” is about Rodigro’s “High School Musical” co-star Joshua Bassett, who released his own single – and car-centered video – on Friday.
Erlich, the Spotify executive, said there was “a ton of X-factor that made this the perfect storm” for Rodrigo, including gossip, the quality of his music, the marketing plan prepared in advance by his label and support from celebrities like Swift. “It lined up perfectly and faster than anything we’ve ever seen,” he said. “We saw an alignment like this, but it usually spans three to six months – it happened in a day and a half.”
Rodrigo called the song “a little time capsule” from a monumental six-month period that she experienced last year. Recognizing the “archetype” of the Disney star who became a pop star, she said she was nervous about the collision of reactions from “people who never heard my name before and people who kind of grew up with me on TV. ”But she was thrilled to find the two interested groups.
“The cool thing about ‘Driver’s license’ is that I saw so many videos of people like, ‘I have no idea who this girl is, but I really love this song’, which has been very interesting for me, because for so long time that I really got attached to projects and characters, and that’s how people know me, ”she said. “It’s really cool to be introduced to people for the first time through a song that I feel really passionate about.”