Olivia Rodrigo Shares Highly Anticipated Debut Single ‘Drivers License’

Singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo has released her highly anticipated original song “drivers license” as her debut single via Interscope/Geffen Records.

Written with and produced by Dan Nigro, a frequent collaborator of Conan Gray, Lewis Capaldi, and Carly Rae Jepsen, “drivers license” is an ode to heartbreak. It arrives with a Matthew Dillon Cohen-directed music video.

In the video, Rodrigo uses her newly obtained driver’s license to cruise aimlessly through the suburbs. Reeling from a breakup, she sings: “I guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me / ‘Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street.”

“When I came up with ‘drivers license,’ I was going through a heartbreak that was so confusing to me, so multifaceted. Putting all those feelings into a song made everything seem so much simpler and clearer,” Rodrigo said.

“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.”

The 17-year-old stars as Nini Salazar-Roberts on the Disney+ series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. “All I Want,” the track that Rodrigo had written for the show’s soundtrack, was released in 2019 and has amassed over 200 million global streams. With 29 million views on its official music video, “All I Want” was the first official glimpse into Rodrigo’s work as a soloist until “drivers license.”

Rodrigo first teased the track on Instagram last summer. “Wrote dis the other day. vv close to my heart. gonna call it drivers license I think lol,” she captioned the video where she plays the song on piano. It has since received over 419,000 likes.

Later this year, the singer plans to release her debut EP. Written during quarantine, the project is said to be a collection of piano-driven songs of the alternative pop genre.

Listen to “drivers license” here.