You don’t have to be a teenager to understand the heartbreak that Olivia Rodrigo sings about. The singer processed the feeling of driving a car alone when she was heartbroken in “Drivers License”. The ballad, which was released in early 2021, obviously struck a chord. Within days, she catapulted Olivia Rodrigo to the top of the charts. Eventually, “Drivers License” became the most-streamed song of 2021 on Spotify.
Olivia Rodrigo has had a career that can hardly be compared in terms of speed. Her debut single was followed by the album “Sour” in May 2021, both of which received multiple awards. Sometimes she sings deeply sad about lovesickness (“Happier”), relationship problems (“1 step forward, 3 steps back”) or the repeatability of love (“Déjà vu”). It gets rockier in the song “Jealousy, jealousy”. It is about the unattainable ideals of beauty in social media.
Seven Grammy nominations
Rodrigo’s songs are marked by strong emotions and the vulnerability of a teenager experiencing everything for the first time – and the typical feeling that no one else understands what it all feels like. “I’m so sick of being seventeen, where’s my fucking teenage dream?” Rodrigo sings in her rather punky song “Brutal”.
Now, just a year after her meteoric rise, Rodrigo can look forward to the Grammys on Sunday (04/03), where she will perform. With seven nominations, including in the four main categories, she also has every chance of a trophy.
At the 2021 American Music Awards, Olivia Rodrigo won the trophy for Best New Artist of the Year
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First, however, the American will start her worldwide tour on April 2nd, for which she will also come to Germany for three concerts in the summer of 2022. All tickets are sold out. It’s Rodrigo’s first tour. The reason: the corona pandemic. She was the catalyst for a change in the music industry that had been on the horizon for some time: today’s singers are not becoming famous through live performances, but via the Internet. Their songs are known on platforms like Spotify, YouTube, Instagram or TikTok.
Recipe for success TikTok
It was similar with Olivia Rodrigo. The short video platform TikTok played a not insignificant role. There her song “Drivers License” went viral, especially the excerpt where the verse turns into an emotional bridge.
In line with this change, TikTok users recreated a scene in which they fall backwards and end up in a bed with their clothes changed. This tipping point is typical for TikTok, as the musicologist Matthias Pasdzierny from the Berlin University of the Arts explains: “Many of these mini-videos work in such a way that you take a hinge point in the song, for example when the beat drops or there is a change in harmony. Together with the video, where you make a costume change or use a different filter, results in a mini-story with its own dramaturgy.”
According to Matthias Pasdzierny, many singers use this TikTok logic to push their songs. The scientist also observed this phenomenon with Rodrigo – the songs were tailored to a TikTok success. “You can’t hear it at all in the music itself,” says Pasdzierny. “But what I found striking, also in the music videos and in how Rodrigo stages himself on TikTok, is that there are such teenage bedroom moments of authenticity.” With her visual staging, Rodrigo serves certain TikTok genres that are running successfully.
It all started with Disney
Olivia Rodrigo was no stranger even before “Drivers Licence”. She also made a name for herself as an actress. Born in California in 2003, she went through a classic Disney career. Her parents – the father with Filipino roots, the mother of Irish-German descent – supported her from an early age, for example with singing and acting lessons.
Olivia Rodrigo als Nini Salazar-Roberts in der Disney-Serie “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series”
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She joined Disney when she was 13 and played one of the main roles in the teen series “Bizaardvark”. As of 2019, she appeared as the main character of the Disney+ series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Unlike other Disney stars, however, she did not sign with the in-house music label, but with the universal label “Interscope Geffen”.
Inspiration: Country music and Taylor Swift
Her musical role model is the American singer Taylor Swift.
Country music also shaped her, says Rodrigo in “driving home 2 u”. The film was released on March 25, 2022 on the streaming provider Disney+. He accompanies Olivia Rodrigo in the process of creating her album “Sour”. Country music taught her to write powerful lyrics. “Country songs are always very specific and authentic, and I think that’s why they’re so heartbreaking at times,” she said.
Even before the songs were released, the singer had spoken openly about her sources of inspiration. Nevertheless, she was often confronted with allegations of plagiarism. Her song “Déjà vu” was compared to Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer”. The melody of their hit “good 4 u” is reminiscent of the song “Misery Business” by the band Paramore. In response to the allegations, Olivia Rodrigo changed the songwriting credits and listed the appropriate artists and producers. “It was very frustrating to have people discredit me and question my creativity,” she said in an interview with the Times.
Another scene in the film shows that success wasn’t always easy. In it, the singer looks into the mirror of the pastel-colored gas station toilet, where she stops after a session in the recording studio. From the off, she says: “It happened practically overnight. Suddenly everyone is watching you. And I thought: ‘Oh my God. Did I ever want that?’ That’s the big question.”
Together for the vaccine: Rodrigo was won over for a White House campaign
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Visit to the White House
Although Olivia Rodrigo may seem tamer at first, her success is reminiscent of pop singer Billie Eilish. Both started extremely young. Eilish has also been showered with Grammy nominations, of which she has now won seven. Just like Eilish in 2019, Rodrigo was named “Woman of the Year 2022” by Billboard magazine. Both Eilish and Rodrigo have also made political statements and support the government under US President Joe Biden.
In the summer of 2021, Olivia Rodrigo visited the White House to promote the corona vaccination there. Her appearance was part of a campaign by the Biden administration to reach out to young and unvaccinated people in the United States.
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