Olivia Rodrigo was a household name before she could legally vote. Born in February 2003 and raised in the Southern California town of Temecula, Rodrigo’s early influences include Taylor Swift, Lorde, Avril Lavigne, Alanis Morissette, and others. Her voice came blasting through the radio in 2021 with her smash hit “Drivers License.” With a distinct style that blends tender songwriting and blistering angst, Rodrigo has proven that her artistic sensibilities far surpass her young adult years. But who is the person behind the hits? Find out below.
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Actress
Before she was a music superstar, Rodrigo got her start in acting. Her first onscreen appearance was in an Old Navy commercial, and she landed her first starring role in the 2015 direct-to-film, An American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success. A year later, she landed another lead role in the Disney Channel show Bizaardvark where she fittingly played a musician, the show running for three seasons.
She also had a small part in an episode of New Girl before she landed the role that shot her to stardom. In 2019, she made her debut as Nini Salazar-Roberts, one of the lead characters on the Disney+ series, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, where she got to flex her musical talents. In addition to singing onscreen, she also wrote the song “All I Want,” which appears in the fourth episode of the first season. The song marked a turning point in Rodrigo’s career after it went viral on Tik Tok and landed her a record deal with Interscope Records. The song has since been certified platinum by the RIAA for sales exceeding one million copies.
[RELATED: Everything We Know About Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Guts’ Album]
Singer
With her critically acclaimed performance on High School Musical, coupled with the success of “All I Want,” Rodrigo built a solid platform as she transitioned to a career in music. She expanded upon this with her debut single, “Drivers License,” in 2021. Co-written by the singer and her producer Dan Nigro, “Drivers License” is responsible for turning her from a burgeoning singer into a superstar. When the song was released when she was 18, it made her the youngest artist to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“When I came up with ‘Drivers License,’ I was going through a heartbreak that was so confusing to me, so multifaceted,” Rodrigo said in a statement at the time. “Putting all those feelings into a song made everything seem so much simpler and clearer—and at the end of the day, I think that’s really the whole purpose of songwriting. There’s nothing like sitting at the piano in my bedroom and writing a really sad song. It’s truly my favorite thing in the world.”
“Drivers License” was a certifiable hit, topping charts around the world from Australia to Isreal. It’s since sold six million copies and won Rodrigo a Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2022 Grammy Awards where she was also named Best New Artist. But that was merely the beginning of her chart-topping success.
Songwriter
“Drivers License” was the lead single off her 2021 debut album, Sour, which not only earned critical acclaim but also spawned two other hits, “Deja Vu” and “Good 4 U.” Rodrigo co-wrote all the tracks on the album, two of which she wrote solely by herself, “Happier” and “Jealousy, Jealousy.” Despite not being released as a single, “Happier” still managed to hit No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100.
As a songwriter, Rodrigo is dedicated to her craft, so much so that every day of quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 she forced herself to write a song. “The second that you start writing a song with the intention of it being liked by other people, it loses its magic,” she told MTV about the craft of songwriting. “I think you just have to be true to you when you’re writing and try to stay out of your head and do it because you love it…those are the best types of songs.”
Rodrigo is currently looking ahead to the release of her highly anticipated sophomore album, Guts, on September 8. It’s preceded by the lead single “Vampire,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100, followed by “Bad Idea Right?” which dropped in August 2023.
Photo by Larissa Hofmann / U Music
