For singer/songwriter Olivia Rodrigo, one of the greatest joys in life comes from deliberately tapping into her deepest heartache. âThereâs nothing like sitting at the piano in my bedroom and writing a really sad song,â she says. âItâs truly my favorite thing in the world.â
With that, Oliviaâs debut single via Geffen Records, âdrivers license,â is a modern epic and brilliant balance of unfiltered outpouring and graceful specificity. With its radiant harmonies and kinetic percussion, the piano-driven, alt-pop song spins a vivid portrait of driving aimlessly through the suburbs and longing for an ex-love, a sentiment Olivia precisely conveys in her pensive lyrics (âYou said forever, now I drive alone past your streetâ). âWhen I came up with âdrivers licenseâ I was going through a heartbreak that was so confusing to me, so multifaceted,â she recalls. âPutting all those feelings into a song made everything seem so much simpler and clearerâand at the end of the day, I think thatâs really the whole purpose of songwriting.â
On âdrivers license,â Olivia showcases the nuanced vocal command sheâs honed since taking up singing as a little girl. Growing up in Southern California, Olivia first discovered her love of songwriting at the age of 12, when sheâd spend hours sketching lyrics in a notebook sheâd won at an arcade. âI was making up songs before I could even form coherent sentences,â she says. âI was always so obsessed with it and sang about the most random things, like getting lost from my parents in the supermarket.â When she was seven Olivia began playing piano, though not completely by choice. âMy dad made me take lessons and I hated every second of itâto the point where Iâd cry before every lessonâbut now Iâm so thankful,â she notes. After landing a role on the comedy series âBizaardvark,â Olivia added guitar to her repertoire and soon immersed herself in learning the craft of songwriting, in part by studying the lyrics of Taylor Swift (her number-one influence). âOnce I started taking it seriously, Iâd just write all the time,â she says. âI have a lot of trouble focusing on schoolwork and in other areas of my life, but when Iâm working on a song itâs like time stops and I canât think of anything else. Itâs magical.â
Though Olivia mostly kept her songs to herself at firstâoccasionally posting snippets on social mediaâshe experienced a major turning point during her first season as the star of Disney+âs âHigh School Musical: The Musical: The Series.â After showrunner Tim Federle heard a song sheâd shared on Instagram, he enlisted Olivia to create a track for the showâs fourth episode. âI remember it was the last day of my sophomore year and I was in the middle of finals, and I had to go write a song based on this prompt theyâd given me,â she says. The result: a heart-on-sleeve piano ballad called âAll I Want,â a gold-certified hit that cracked the Billboard Hot 100, emerged as the showâs top-streamed song, and amassed more than 200 million global streams.
âFor me the goal of all music is to take these complicated feelings and externalize them in a way that makes people feel seenâbut then when someone tells me that one of my songs resonates with them, it makes me feel seen too,â she says. âItâs so inspiring to see my music affect people and maybe help them to feel less alone, and I just want to keep doing that for the rest of my life.â
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