If you haven’t heard Olivia Rodrigo’s debut single, ‘Drivers License,’ you’re either not on TikTok, aren’t in tune with today’s hits, or live under a rock. The TikTok hashtag #driverslicense amassed over 888.5 million views in one week after it’s’ release. Olivia describes this song as “a little time capsule” of a monumental 6 months of her life she experienced last year. Typically, songs take three to six months to spread and become popular. Hers took only a day and a half to reach the fame it did. The single quickly climbed the charts upon its release, reaching the top four and eventually hitting the top spot on iTunes, surpassing Rodrigo’s idol, Taylor Swift, who praised her on Instagram. At 17 years and 11 months old, Rodrigo is the youngest artist at the time of topping the Hot 100 since Billie Eilish, who was 17 years, eight months and one week old when she led with “Bad Guy” in August 2019. ‘Drivers License” also broke the Spotify record for the most streamed song in a day for a non-holiday song with over 15.17 million global streams. The next day, January 12th, the song beat its own record with over 17.01 million streams. The heartbreak ballad beat out Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next.” 

The song’s background story relates to Olivia and Josh’s relationship when they met on the TV show “High School Musical: The Musical Series.” Drama had started when Josh and Sabrina Carpenter were spotted together, and Olivia Rodrigo posted a selfie in a “dump him” t-shirt on her Instagram. Olivia then released this song describing her past relationship with Josh and his current relationship Sabrina Carpenter. When Olivia was asked who the song was about she stated “I totally understand people’s curiosity with the specifics of who the song’s about and what it’s about, but to me, that’s really the least important part of the song” in an interview with Billboard. 

Josh released a song called ‘Lie, Lie, Lie,’ that next week, and Sabrina then followed with a song of her own called ‘Skin.’ When fans connected the dots, they speculated ‘Skin’ was written about her relationship with Josh, and her feelings towards Olivia. However, Olivia just wrote the song to help others cope that are going through the same experience she did, which Sabrina responded to by posting on her Instagram how the song wasn’t directly towards Olivia. When Emma Pirollo was asked if she thought Olivia wrote this song about her and Josh she responded with “I would assume so because Sabrina dated Joshua after he dated Olivia, so she was probably upset about it.” 

This song has led Olivia to become the youngest artist to reach a number one single in the United States. It also peaked in other countries around the world including Canada, Brazil, Germany, France, and Spain. After its first week, the song has garnered over 50 million streams and it keeps climbing. According to Spotify data, Rodrigo is now the third most streamed female artist on Spotify as of January 12th. For having only one single out, that is an incredible accomplishment. “It’s very catchy.” said McKenna Murawski in an interview earlier this week. Overall this song has become widely popular all over the world in just a short amount of time, and it’s only going up from here.