Olivia Rodrigo’s had one heck of a stellar year. Following the release of her debut single “Driver’s License,” the High School Musical The Musical: The Series star skyrocketed to superstardom in the music scene. She’s been breaking records and racking up awards and nominations ever since.
Hers may seem like a story of overnight success, but Olivia doesn’t categorize it as such.
In a recent interview with Apple Music, the 18-year-old singer revealed that she does not believe she’s an overnight success. She declared:
“I think my whole life is just like changing in an instant and I don’t think like my success by any means was like over night just cause you know, I’ve been writing songs since I was 9 years old and like working so hard for so long.”
She did go on to say that her quick rise to success has been “pretty amazing”:
“But it was truly just like, oh, like you know like an actor on a show to like oh my gosh like the song that you wrote was just like completely everywhere and like affecting so many people and that happened super quickly and so um, yeah I don’t know I still haven’t really processed that sort of immediacy but um, yeah, it’s pretty amazing.”
Olivia also revealed that “Driver’s License”’s success has been very cathartic for her:
“…That song was so personal and such an intimate part of my experience and my heart, and so putting it out in general and just like letting it go and being like this is the world’s now this is not mine was like such an important part of my healing journey, and to like watch other people relate to it made me feel so much more like less along.”
She went on to talk about how music is such a beautiful thing connecting everyone:
“I think that’s a really beautiful thing about music is that, you know, we all have these sort of shared experiences and sometimes we think that oh no like, I’m going through this alone and nobody else feels the exact way that I feel and um, just watching the way that ‘driver’s license’ affected people made me realize that, you know I wasn’t alone in all of those feelings and we’re all sort of this big human community experiencing all these feelings together so.”
