I’ll start off by saying I had no idea who Olivia Rodrigo was – a student recommended that I listen to the song after conducting a regular wellness check with her. And I’m glad I did. Soaked in cutting honesty and heartbreak, Olivia crafts a simple yet powerful ode to her former first love with “drivers license.”
As I’ve said so many times in the past, honesty in songwriting is the one way to ensure authenticity and have an audience warm up to your journey. Olivia embraces this rule wholeheartedly. Through her experiences, the listener is able to reminisce about their own – whether it’s our first love, our last love, or that one person who you’ve never truly fully gotten over. We all have our own “blonde girl” that someone left us for, which is part of this song’s magical/universal appeal.
Reminiscent of the songwriting journeys of Taylor Swift, Drake, The Weeknd, Troye Sivan, Lorde, and countless other contemporaries, Olivia doesn’t hold back her gut-wrenching, emotion-packed punches. Yes, she’s 17, but that’s what makes this song that much more compelling: she’s writing it from the perspective of someone who hasn’t become jaded by love. The song may be covered in despair and longing, but elements of hopefulness continue to grow with each subsequent listen. It may not be at the level of processing that Selena Gomez delivers on “Lose You To Love Me,” but it’s an earlier stage in the break-up cycle that still needs to be experienced fully. And I’m not talking about the hope she may feel for the return of her fuccboi ex, but rather metaphor of her earning her license. Of driving; driving alone, past his street; she’s now capable of making moves, changing her own trajectory, and slowly (I mean come on, she’s driving in a suburb so the speed limit is like 20 MPH) but surely moving on.
View the stunning visual here:
Getting her license, as it is for most 16-year-olds in the US, was a major life event. And according to my student, it was something she had learned how to earn through the help of her ex. Their relationship was something idealized not only by the public (apparently they were co-stars or something) but also by Olivia herself. But then, things fizzled out, the ex made empty promises, and Olivia was left in despair. Thankfully, the song focuses on her state of mind, does a respectable amount of holding the guy accountable, and doesn’t try to tear down the blonde girl Sabrina Carpenter. It’s not Sabrina’s the blonde girl’s fault; the song does a great job of blaming her ex-beau and his empty promises instead of pitting women against one another for the affection of this fuccboi (see classics “Dignity” by fellow Disney alum Hilary Duff or even “The Boy Is Mine” by Brandy and Monica). It’s her first love, and it’s one she may not necessarily get over – and girl, join the club; for those of us who love hard and fully, it can be a rocky road. But the journey/experience is ALWAYS worth it. Who’s to say what Olivia would do if her ex comes back into her life and tries to win her heart back? My bets are on her caving and falling back in love. But that’s simply based on her age and the contents of this song – she hasn’t found the self-love that Selena conjured in her song “Lose You.”
In that sense, the song is perfectly imperfect. Fingers crossed for Olivia that she will stop torturing herself by driving past this guy’s house. Yes, it’s cute right now, but when it persists for more than a year, girl it’s time to pull out the stop sign and take a good look at the stalking and obsession/consumption shaping your life. At the end of the day, girl you need to find other routes to drive! But it’s good to feel those feelings, call that crummy ex out, and remember your own self-worth. The song does a good job of not dwelling too much on these hard feelings, but there is a drawn-out feeling that can consume the listener; for example, the final repeated chorus in the last ten seconds doesn’t necessarily have to exist – the song is ending and it could have “faded to black” after the driving “alone past your street” line, but Olivia makes it a point to remind the listener one last time that she’s repeating that agonizing step. But these little things that could polish the song up and make it more commercial are also the same things that make it so memorable and approachable. It encapsulates this balance well through the breaks in her voice, the sudden removal of synths, the choir in the bridge that eerily accompanies Olivia’s own emotional toil. These little pieces come together to give us the solid debut that Olivia has crafted for us.
Rating: 3.75/5 stars
