Olivia Rodrigo's first single broke Spotify records within days
In January 2021 a Disney actor released her debut single and watched it set Spotify's daily streaming record for a non-holiday song twice in two days. Olivia Rodrigo, who had negotiated to own her own masters, called it the craziest week of her life. The song entered the Hot 100 at number one.
Rodrigo was born on February 20, 2003, in Murrieta, California, to a schoolteacher and a family therapist, and grew up an only child in nearby Temecula. Half-deaf in her left ear from birth, she is half-Filipina, and her parents raised her on No Doubt, Pearl Jam and Green Day. Vocal lessons began at five, piano at nine, and by 12 she was playing guitar. At seven she appeared in an Old Navy commercial.
Acting came first. In 2015 she took the title role in An American Girl: Grace Stirs Up Success, released straight to video, then moved to Los Angeles for the Disney Channel series Bizaardvark, playing a guitarist for three seasons. From 2019 she starred in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series on Disney+, leaving after its third season to concentrate on music.
Drivers License, co-written with producer Dan Nigro and released on January 8, 2021, was streamed worldwide more than 15.7 million times on January 11, then topped 17 million a day later. Her album Sour, released on May 21, 2021, spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard 200, and Time named her Entertainer of the Year. At the 64th Grammys she won Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Pop Solo Performance.
For her second album, Guts, released on September 8, 2023, she even reworked a homework poem from a University of Southern California class into the song Lacy. BBC News later judged it the most acclaimed album of 2023. That August she became the youngest recipient of the Brit Billion Award, and with Drop Dead in 2026 she became the first artist whose lead singles from her first three albums all debuted at number one.
Source: Olivia Rodrigo
