Olivia Rodrigo’s 2021 song “driver’s license” was the hit track of the year. But not everyone felt good about it.
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Actor Joshua Bassett, who many believe is the subject of the Rodrigo hit breakup song, says he was hospitalized for heart failure and panic attacks upon the track’s massive success.
Bassett said he became seriously ill when the track began rising up the charts.
“I was sleeping 16 to 20 hours a day,” he told People, adding, “I couldn’t even stand up for longer than 30 seconds.”
He added, “I felt my heart literally failing. I was like, ‘This isn’t just anxiety. This is bad.’”
Bassett, who dropped the single, “Lie Lie Lie,” a week after “driver’s license” came out, presumably as a retort to Rodrigo’s track, continued telling the outlet, “The doctors were like, ‘If you hadn’t checked in within 12 hours, you would have died in your apartment.’ It’s wild that I was this close to taking another nap.”
To date, neither has confirmed that Rodrigo’s track is in fact about their breakup.
Bassett, who was Rodrigo’s co-star on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, said that he spent nine days in the hospital, but his health worries continued even after he left.
“I was even more depressed and stressed,” he said. “I had a panic attack every single day.”
But, the 21-year-old entertainer noted, the difficult times only made him stronger.
Bassett said, “In this last year a lot of my biggest fears came true. But in that, I found that I’ll always be OK, if not better off.”
In fact, Bassett reminds himself of this quote whenever he opens his cell phone: “Peace is the only path that leads you home.”
But even though he’s experienced hard times and made music from it, it wasn’t such a clean progression.
“People had this mentality like, ‘Oh, you were going through so much, so what you were making must have been so great,'” he said. “While, yes, I was able to make something out of my pain, a lot of times it was just me grieving and going through all these different feelings.”
Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Warner Music
