For starters, it’s an arduous task to define fame. Nowadays, you can open up a free TikTok account and be seen and heard by thousands. Someone with a certain amount of followers may be considered “famous” today, but might not even be known back in a time when social media wasn’t as developed.
Whether Olivia Rodrigo is famous or not isn’t a question – the 18-year-old’s debut single “Drivers License” alone broke the Spotify record for most streams in a week with around 66 million. But why did she get so famous in such little time? It could be that social media enables faster growth and greater publicity for pretty much anything; it seems as though @livbedumb’s songs are perpetually “trending” on TikTok. Or maybe it’s because our generation is more inclined to listen to someone already familiar to us through the Disney Channel shows “Bizaardvark” and “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series”. But singers such as Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, and Miley Cyrus were all also Disney Channel icons before their successful music careers took off, and none experienced such results so soon. This begs the question, it is simply easier to become famous than it was before? This doesn’t undermine Rodrigo’s success – all 11 of the songs from her new album “Sour” will still be stuck in my head for at least the next week. It just showcases modern society’s behaviour, and how much power today’s media holds due to how heavily it is relied upon.
How it all started, & where she is now
Olivia Rodrigo’s acting career started with the lead role of Grace Thomas in an American Girl movie. As mentioned above, she then made her Disney Channel debut in “Bizaardvark”, playing Paige Olvera for all three seasons of the show. She currently plays Nini in “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series”, which is now streaming its second season on Disney+. Many believe that Joshua Bassett, her co-star on the show (playing the role of Ricky Bowen), is the subject of many of Olivia Rodrigo’s songs.
In her first song, “Drivers License”, Rodrigo says something about someone not meaning what they wrote in a song about her. It seems very likely that this was a reference to Joshua Bassett’s song “Anyone Else”. Soon after the release of “Drivers License”, Bassett released a song called “Lie Lie Lie”. Coincidence? I think not. As if this wasn’t enough, a theory emerged that the ‘blonde girl’ Olivia Rodrigo referred to in her song was fellow Disney Channel star Sabrina Carpenter, who played Maya in “Girl Meets World”. Joshua Bassett and Sabrina Carpenter had been repeatedly spotted together, including their viral “Sharkboy and Lavagirl” TikTok. Inevitably, Carpenter then released her own song, “Skin”, with a line that says “maybe blonde was the only rhyme”. This is merely a simplified version of the drama that may or may not be true, but if it is, then we have three Disney Channel stars to thank for over ten great songs in total. When did our favourite TV shows get so complicated?
All three of these up-and-coming celebrities now have a foot in both worlds, as they have all ventured into the music industry while still acting. Olivia Rodrigo has made the biggest mark by far, releasing her first album on May 21st, 2021. This album, with the name “Sour”, features the 11 songs listed below.
- “brutal”
- “traitor”
- “drivers license”
- “1 step forward, 3 steps back”
- “deja vu”
- “good 4 u”
- “enough for you”
- “happier”
- “jealousy, jealousy”
- “favorite crime”
- “hope ur ok”
All in all, it doesn’t matter who left the ‘sour’ taste in her mouth or how she rose to the top of Billboard’s charts. At only 18, Olivia Rodrigo has made great contributions to pop culture and likely won’t slow down anytime soon.
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