The personal stakes are higher as Rodrigo gestures at the life changes (and expectations) that her newfound stardom have produced, but she matches them by thrusting her songwriting into more adventurous, and rewarding, territory. With Guts, Rodrigo’s feverishly anticipated sophomore album, the rocket ship keeps climbing higher and higher: if Sour represented a rock-solid, no-skips debut, its follow-up is a bigger and better sequel, more confident and gripping in almost every way. With a preternatural talent like Rodrigo, the artistic and commercial successes felt predestined from the moment we first heard, “‘Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street.” Of course her debut album, 2021’s Sour, was just as impressively detailed and sumptuously catchy of course songs like “good 4 u” and “Deja Vu” became just as ubiquitous on top 40 radio and streaming services of course the best new artist Grammy was in the bag of course the first headlining shows were giddy shout-alongs. With the still-dazzling “Drivers License,” Olivia Rodrigo arrived as a fully formed pop savant, capable of piercing turns of phrase, major-key choruses and bridges that stop you in your tracks and force you to sway along.
#OLIVIA RODRIGO GOOD FOR YOU LYRICS CLEAN SERIES#
That’s how it felt in January 2021, when the co-star of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series released her debut single. Sometimes, though, they’re just that good - commandingly, undeniably good - with a song that showcases that talent.
But the key to letting it out is keeping it together.There are a million reasons why a musical artist catches lightning and sends a song to the top of the charts: Maybe they’re a superstar with a bulletproof commercial offering, or they’re an unknown riding cultural headwinds to a strong reaction, or they’re somewhere in between, with the right TikTok challenge at the right time. Her content is all-caps, but her delivery is lowercase, lacing bedroom pop with a vulnerability and anger rare for teen pop: “Where’s my fucking teenage dream?” she wonders on “brutal.” “I’m the biggest emo drama queen,” Rodrigo tells Apple Music. Like Swift-and Lorde, too-Rodrigo has a knack for conjuring big feelings through small details: an ex singing along to their Billy Joel with his new love (“deja vu”), reading his self-help books “so you’d think that I was smart” (“enough for you”). But, really, what could prepare you for breaking the global single-week streaming record for a female artist? Especially on your first single? And getting a nod from Taylor Swift in the meantime? (Along with “drivers license” winning the Apple Music Award for Top Song of the Year in 2021, Rodrigo’s debut LP, SOUR, was the Top Album of the Year and Rodrigo herself was named Breakthrough Artist of the Year.) Born in Temecula, California, in 2003, she started lessons in piano, voice, and acting as a child, and went on to star in Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Rodrigo was just 17 when the song came out, but she had been getting ready for years. “And I got home and I was like, ‘Maybe I’ll write a song about this: crying in the car.’” Rodrigo had tapped into a universal experience: The middle-aged guys weren’t teenage girls, but they’d also driven around listening to sad songs. “I was driving around my neighborhood listening to really sad songs, like, crying in the car,” Rodrigo told Apple Music. By the end of their discourse, they’re all in tears, singing along. Another complains that it just sounds like a teenage girl sitting alone at a piano. One puts “drivers license” on the jukebox.
A few weeks after Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license” became the biggest song in the world, Saturday Night Live ran a sketch that featured a bunch of middle-aged guys shooting pool in a dive bar.
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