Olivia Rodrigo at the premiere of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series in 2019 at the Walt Disney Studio Lot in California.
Rachel Luna / FilmMagic photo
If you haven’t met Olivia Rodrigo, it will be difficult to miss her now. The Disney star released his official debut single, Driver License, a week ago, on January 8. Cut to three days later and the song broke Spotify’s record for most broadcasts in one day for a song outside the holiday with over 15 million global plays (the song continued to beat its own record with over 17 million broadcasts the next day, January 12th).
In other words, the driver’s license is the biggest song in the world today. So how did this happen for a relatively unknown 17-year-old? In addition to the music’s own merits – a ballad of emotional power over heartbreak – its “unprecedented” success has a few other viral factors. (Go ahead, listen here.)
Even Spotify opined on what led to the “perfect storm”.
“There is really no direct comparison here,” Becky Bass, leader of Spotify at Global Hits, told Billboard. “You have younger artists like Tones and I with Dance Monkey, or Lil Nas X and Old Town Road, which took a little longer to grow and reach the top of the charts.” But the Spotify team has never seen “a younger artist who just walks out of the gate in such a dominant way and continues to grow.”
“It really looks unprecedented and probably unprecedented.”
There are some elements in the story. Rodrigo, who starred in the Disney Channel sitcom Bizaardvark, has many followers on TikTok and Instagram. His engaged young audience “lit the flame” before a shout from Taylor Swift and a plug from one of the Dolan twins, comedians with almost 11 million subscribers on YouTube helped make the song go viral.
Then there is the drama surrounding Rodrigo’s supposed relationship – and breakup – with his fellow Disney star, Joshua Bassett. Rodrigo and Bassett played a couple in the Disney Plus High School Musical mockumentary series: The Musical: The Series. It is speculated that Bassett is subject to the driver’s license. The intrigue continues: Bassett, also a singer, released his single, Lie Lie Lie, on January 14.
“I definitely think it’s a perfect storm,” said Bass from Spotify. “I think the drama – which was familiar [Rodrigo’s] central fan base, and it really started things going – it helped, and now you have a whole new audience that’s like, “Who is Olivia Rodrigo? Who is Joshua Bassett?”
Regardless, music is a banger. Here is the video clip: