Olivia Rodrigo on writing "driver's license"

Brut America

With her debut single, "driver's license", she's made history as the youngest artist to top U.S. charts.   Olivia Rodrigo talks to Brut about the story behind the breakout hit that she wrote in quarantine.

Transcript

00:00Two days after the song came out, we were like, oh, whoa, this doesn't usually happen.

00:04This is really crazy.

00:05Is the computer glitching?

00:06Why are so many people streaming it?

00:07It's crazy.

00:08I was over quarantine and had actually just gotten my driver's license.

00:22I was driving around my neighborhood for the first time by myself, which was this big excursion.

00:27It was super exciting.

00:28I was listening to a bunch of sad music, and I felt really moved by the music I was

00:33listening to.

00:34It was really inspiring.

00:35I drove right home, and I sat at my piano, and I wrote the first verse and chorus of

00:41Driver's License.

00:42Then the next day, I was like, oh, wow, that was actually pretty good, what I wrote yesterday.

00:46I wrote the second verse, and then I brought it to my producer and collaborator, Dan Nigro,

00:51who helped me finish it up, and we produced it together.

00:55Yeah, that's sort of Driver's License that we have today.

01:20I was absolutely not prepared for that at all.

01:23I had no expectations of getting a driver's license, but even if I did have expectations,

01:28in no way could they have ever prepared me for what actually happened.

01:31The success was pretty instantaneous, which was crazy.

01:45It was pretty quick, and it was just mind-blowing, but also sort of weird because it was in quarantine,

01:51too.

01:53I had this big hit song that people were really liking, but I had no context of that in the

01:58real world.

01:59I was just looking at my phone, you know what I mean?

02:01It was sort of a weird, isolated experience at the same time.

02:05I actually had never performed one of my own songs before in my life, on a large scale,

02:12more than just my mom and my dad.

02:23My debut album is sort of a slice of my 17-year-old heart, and I think a first heartbreak is something

02:34that teenagers feel very acutely, among other growing pains.

02:39So, yeah, I just sort of wanted to capture that teenage experience as best I could.

02:45Obviously, Driver's License was this huge success, and there's obviously a little bit

02:51of pressure that goes along with following that up, but at the end of the day, I really

02:55just love songwriting.

02:57It's my favorite thing in the world to do, and I would do it regardless of whether or

03:02not people were listening.

03:03So, the fact that people are going to listen is just sort of icing on the cake for me.

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