Olivia Rodrigo at the 2019 premiere of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.
Rachel Luna / FilmMagic
If you did not know Olivia Rodrigo, it will be hard to miss her now. The Disney star dropped her official debut single Drivers License a week ago on January 8th. The song cut to three days later and the song broke Spotify’s record for most streams on a single day for a non-holiday song with more than 15 million worldwide plays (the song) continued its own record, with the next day on January 12 more than 17 million streams).
In other words, driver’s license is currently the biggest song in the world. How, then, did this happen to a relatively unknown 17-year-old? Aside from the song’s own merits – an emotional power ballad about sadness – the ‘unprecedented’ success has a few other factors that make it viral. (Continue, listen to this.)
Even Spotify consulted which led to the ‘perfect storm’.
“There really is no direct comparison here,” Becky Bass, starring Spotify, told Billboard. “You have newer artists like Tones and I with Dance Monkey, or Lil Nas X and Old Town Road, which took a little longer to grow into card toppers.” But the Spotify team has never seen “a newer artist come out of the gate in such a dominant way and just grow further.”
“It feels really unprecedented and is probably unprecedented.”
There are some elements in the story. Rodrigo, who starred in the Disney Channel sitcom Bizarre Pig, has a huge following on TikTok and Instagram. Her engaged young audience ignited the flame before an exclamation from Taylor Swift and a plug from one of the Dolan Twins, comedians with nearly 11 million subscribers on YouTube, helped the song go viral.
Then there is the drama surrounding Rodrigo’s rumors – and breakups – with fellow Disney star Joshua Bassett. Rodrigo and Bassett played a couple in the Disney Plus mockumentary series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Bassett is speculated to be the driver’s license. The plot continues: Bassett, also a singer, dropped his single, Lie Lie Lie, on January 14th.
“I definitely think it’s a perfect storm,” Spotify’s Bass said. ‘I think the drama – which was known to [Rodrigo’s] core fanbase, and really started things going – helped, and now you have this whole new audience that sounds like, “Who’s Olivia Rodrigo? Who’s Joshua Bassett?”
Regardless, the song is a banger. Here is the music video: