On January 23, the Billboard chart made a statement: a star is born. Olivia Rodrigo debuted at number one on the Hot 100 Chart with her first official song, “drivers license.” The song’s chart performance is also breaking records. In one week, the song was streamed 76.1 million times and sold 38,000 copies, putting it at first by both measurements. This has also been reflected on the radio. The 76.1 million streams were the highest since Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” hit 93 million. Rodrigo was born in February 2003, making her 17 years and 11 months old. She is the fourth artist born in the 2000s to reach number one on the Hot 100, and the youngest since Billie Eilish when she topped the list with “Bad Guy” at age 17 years and eight months.

The dramatic response started from immediately after the song was released on Friday, January 8. By the end of the weekend it reached 21 million streams in the United States alone; over those three days, it had already surpassed the 17.5 million weekly streams belonging to “Mood,” the Hot 100’s previous number one song. On Spotify, the world’s largest streaming service, the song set an all-time record for the most plays worldwide—17 million—in a single day on January 12. The streaming company sensed an unusual record coming on, and immediately began adding the song to its various playlists. Even before the charts were released, reviews citing an “unprecedented phenomenon” and a “perfect storm” started to surface. Above all, this was not limited to the US; a similar response could be seen around the world.

The song, in fact, topped the Billboard Global 200 and Global Excl. US charts as well. Including the US, Rodrigo’s song had been streamed 130 million times globally, making it the most streamed song since “Life Goes On” by BTS, which had 150 million listens. “drivers license,” meanwhile, came out slightly ahead of Mariah Carey’s Christmas hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” This is also the first time a song has topped the Hot 100 plus the two global charts simultaneously since BTS’s “Life Goes On” and Ariana Grande’s “Positions.”

Of course, Rodrigo didn’t simply come out of nowhere and achieve this feat. She rose to fame as a Disney star and plays one of the main characters on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, a recently launched Disney+ show targeted at teens. It is typical form for Disney stars to extend their reach into the music scene, starting long ago with Britney Spears and again with Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez. However, not everyone who makes the leap from Disney star to musician can immediately produce such record-breaking results.

“drivers license” follows the familiar breakup song formula. The narrator tells the story of how she promised her now ex-boyfriend she would get her driver’s license but, having done so, cannot go to his house and instead simply drives through the suburbs. The music video faithfully replicates this key image. Many fans interpret the song as being based on Rodrigo’s real-life love story: her relationship with High School Musical co-star Joshua Bassett. The two broke up and, sometime after she heard the news in July of Bassett’s new relationship, Rodrigo released a portion of an early version of “drivers license” on her Instagram account.

The short song, which could have ended up as just another former lovers’ Internet quarrel, was instead perfected at the hands of Geffen Records, and the details in the lyrics were adjusted to align more closely with reality. For example, “his” new girlfriend’s hair color went from being brown to blonde. This type of song typically bucks against reality and maintains a pretense of fiction, but “drivers license” actually goes out of its way to reflect real life more closely. The explosive interest early on was driven by a mention by Taylor Swift via social media and from there gained popularity on TikTok, leading to a chain reaction. The song has all the telltale signs of 2021 popular culture wrapped into one.

TRIVIA

Billboard Global 200 and Global Excl. US charts
Popular music charts introduced by Billboard in September that reflect music sales and streaming from more than 200 regions around the world. Billboard prepared the charts over a period of two years to reflect the US music industry’s growing interest in the global market. The Global 200 lists popular songs from the world over including the US, while the Global Excl. US chart, as the name suggests, tallies global figures without factoring in US numbers.