I, like many others, had never heard of Olivia Rodrigo a month ago. Today, you can’t spend more than 5 minutes on TikTok without hearing her debut single, drivers license. The song is an emotional ballad that was swooped up by TikTok creators to be used for snappy covers, over-dramatic lipsyncs, and outfit transition videos, making the song an instant hit.
Olivia Rodrigo is the modern-day Disney Channel starlet. She has been involved with the Disney Channel since 2016 and has been following a similar trajectory to the OG Disney stars (TV series, musical, solo singing career). This career path isn’t too dissimilar from Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez, who both had their own TV shows and subsequent successful singing careers (stream Plastic Hearts for clear skin!).
drivers license blew up at the start of 2021, mainly due to its lyrical content. The song is assumed to be about her ex-boyfriend (and co-star) Joshua Bassett, another Disney star, who seems to have ripped poor Olivia’s heart in half. She sings about getting her driving license, which the couple had always talked about, and how now she drives around the suburbs and cries (a mood).
Most notably, within the song, Olivia sings about a “blonde girl” who is older than her and is “everything I’m insecure about”. Obviously, this picked up some attention, because the internet loves a good love triangle (as do you and I). The blonde girl was quickly identified as Sabrina Carpenter, an ex-Disney star, who is now with Joshua Bassett (who caused Olivia to weep when driving to the shops). Olivia’s lyrics aren’t necessarily shady or cruel towards Sabrina, she calls her pretty and mentions that she’s jealous of her, which are pretty nice statements.
It seems as though Sabrina didn’t take the lyrics that way. Only a few weeks after the release of drivers license, Sabrina released her new single, skin. In the song Sabrina seems to crack a massive F-U towards Olivia whilst singing “don’t drive yourself insane” and “maybe blonde was the only rhyme”, lyrics that are clearly pointed towards drivers license. Although Sabrina claimed that the song had nothing to do with the Olivia situation and stated that she “wasn’t bothered by a few lines in a (magnificent) song”, I don’t know if I fully buy it.
Now, to top it all off, Joshua released a new song entitled only a matter of time where he sings, “time to tell the world you’ve been lyin’ on my name”, and the most notably directed lyric towards Olivia, “are you glad you got that out?”. Tea!
Let’s face it, I have no idea who these people are and I’m definitely way too old to be interested in a love triangle, but yet here I am. The whole situation reeks of genius marketing schemes that is making us all look like clowns, I’m convinced that the trio are probably good friends. Although there seems to be consistent shots fired towards each other, what we need to not do is pit women against each other!
It’s a shame that neither Olivia or Sabrina is able to relic in their success without people pinning it on media drama or undermining their talents. With such a male-dominated music industry, we should be supporting new female artists, not allowing the media to bash them for petty drama. I’m not completely innocent in this situation, I definitely binged endless YouTube videos on the drama, but hindsight has reminded me that we should be celebrating female achievements! In short- let’s not pin female success on petty drama that hinders their moment to shine x
A collection of my favourite drivers license TikToks, you’re welcome!
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe1CESy2/
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe1XjK4S/
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe1XMmGT/
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe1XkyrL/
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe1CT9wS/