You might not know who Olivia Rodrigo is, or even what she looks like, but if you’ve been on the internet at all throughout the past few days, you’ve definitely heard her debut single ‘Drivers License’.
It’s a song about, well, getting your drivers license – that, and a pretty bad break-up. Written by 17-year-old Rodrigo and producer Dan Nigro, who has also worked with Sky Ferreira, Caroline Polachek, Carly Rae Jepsen and more, the song is reminiscent of fellow teen prodigies Lorde and Billie Eilish in its lyricism and vocal delivery – nailing Eilish’s whispers and Lorde’s belters – with a bit of Taylor Swift-style storytelling in there for good measure.
The song came out on Friday, 8th January, but it has been making bigger moves than anyone could have predicted. Rodrigo didn’t exactly come from nowhere – she starred in Disney Channel‘s Bizaardvark before moving on to star in Disney+’s stupidly titled High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.
Still, none of that decent exposure could have meant that her debut single would do the numbers it has been doing. It went viral on TikTok – of course – and has now been streamed over 33 million (!) times on Spotify – in just five days.
On Monday, 11th January, the song was streamed 11.5 million times globally. This makes ‘Drivers License’ the record-holder for most global single day streams for a non-Christmas song, and the seventh highest global single day streams altogether.
On top of that, she also now holds the record in the US Spotify charts for most single day streams (5.6 million) for any female artist ever, outdoing Ariana Grande’s ‘thank u, next’.
Finally, Rodrigo is on track to make even more history next week. With the numbers she’s pulling, she’s poised to debut at the top end of the Billboard 100. If she debuts at #1, she’ll join a select group of artists that have debuted at the top spot with their debut single. Of those artists, they’ve all either come from a group (Zayn from One Direction, Ms. Lauryn Hill from The Fugees) or come from television juggernaut American Idol (Clay Aiken, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood and Taylor Hicks). She will also become the youngest artist in history to debut at #1 overall.
Feel free to watch the video for ‘Drivers License’ below – you’ll be hearing this one a lot.
