A beginners' guide to Olivia Rodrigo: Albums, High School Musical, and that famous Cork gig
Olivia Rodrigo plays two dates in Ireland this week.
She’s one of her generation’s biggest pop stars, with tens of thousands of devoted fans, millions of monthly streams and half a dozen mega-hits.
Now, Olivia Rodrigo is returning to Ireland for two sell-out shows at 3Arena, her first Irish dates since she kicked off her inaugural European tour at the Live at the Marquee venue in Cork in June 2022.
Tickets have been rarer than public sightings of Taylor Swift’s exes since the release of the Tortured Poet’s Department – and for those with a precious stub, excitement is growing. Ahead of those concerts on Tuesday, April 30, and Wednesday, May 1, here is a starter’s guide to the 'Drivers License' singer, as told through the magic medium of numbers.
The number of studio albums Rodrigo has put out. Released in May 2021, her debut Sour, was an immediate success around the world, including in Ireland. Two and a half years later came Guts, which again topped the charts worldwide, propelled by its mischievous lead single, 'Bad Idea', Right? Critics were on her side from the start. Rolling Stone praised Sour for wielding “breakup angst and intimacy”… “like a glittery dagger”. The NME heralded Guts as “a display of real power, range and versatility”.
The number of seasons Rodrigo portrayed Nini Salazar-Roberts in Disney’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Her character is a musical theatre enthusiast who auditions for the lead part in a school production of Disney’s High School Musical (the show is styled as a tongue-in-cheek mockumentary and is knowingly irreverent towards the original High School Musical).
She was the star for three of the series’ four years. Her character was finally written out when she left her home in Utah with dreams of making it in LA. It was a case of art imitating life: by the time her departure from High School Musical was announced, Rodrigo had already topped the charts with Drivers License.
Yet if High School Musical has receded in her rearview mirror, she continues to credit it as significant factor in her musical development. Rodrigo was already a budding songwriter when she joined Disney – but too shy to share her music. The series’ success gave her the confidence she needed.
“I think when I got into High School Musical I was writing all these songs,” she would say. “But I was so shy and I just kept to myself that I think going on that show having music be such a big part of it kind of emboldened me to be more open with it.”
The Number of Songwriters Credited on Deja Vu: Rodrigo has never made any secret of her love for Taylor Swift – one of her early viral moments was a cover of Swift’s 'Cruel Summer' posted to YouTube. However, when she released her 'Drivers License' follow-up, 'Deja Vu', there was a feeling that it owed a little too much to 'Cruel Summer', and Swift and her 'Cruel Summer' co-writers Jack Antonoff and Annie Clark (aka St Vincent) were later added to the tune’s credits, alongside Rodrigo and her collaborator Dan Nigro.
The addition of Swift as a co-writer created a stir on social media and fuelled rumours of a Rodrigo vs. Swift “feud”—though Rodrigo played this down. “I don’t have beef with anyone,” she told Rolling Stone. I’m very chill. I keep to myself. I have my four friends and my mom, and that’s really the only people I talk to, ever. There’s nothing to say. There are so many Twitter conspiracy theories. I only look at alien conspiracy theories.”
The Number of Grammy Nominations Rodrigo Received for her first album: Drivers License was an instant smash in 2021, and the single and follow-up, Sour, were acknowledged at the Grammys when she received seven nominations – including a nod for Best New Artist. Having grown up in LA and visited the Grammy Museum with her family, she said the acknowledgement humbled her – and was delighted to win Best New Artist, Best Pop Solo Performance and Best Pop Vocal Album.
The Number of Weeks Rodrigo’s Debut Single 'Drivers License' Spent at Number One in the US: Nobody expected much from Rodrigo’s debut single when it was released on January 8, 2021. But the tune, written as Rodrigo recovered from a broken heart, struck a chord with listeners worldwide. “When I came up with Drivers License, I was going through a heartbreak that was so confusing to me, so multifaceted,” Rodrigo would say. “Putting all those feelings into a song made everything seem so much simpler and clearer—and at the end of the day, I think that’s the whole purpose of songwriting. There’s nothing like sitting at the piano in my bedroom and writing a sad song. It’s truly my favourite thing in the world.” Soon, it was everyone else’s favourite thing, too – it topped the US Billboard charts for eight consecutive weeks and reached number one in Ireland, where it was the second most streamed track of the year.
The age mentioned by Rodrigo when singing her song 'Brutal': “And I’m so sick of 17/Where’s my f**king teenage dream?” Though many felt the tune’s riff owed a lot to Elvis Costello’s 1978 single 'Pump It Up', Costello declined to make a big deal of the claims, saying, “This is fine by me ... It’s how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand-new toy. That’s what I did.”
Rodrigo’s age. She was born in February 2003, the daughter of a school teacher and a therapist, and grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Temecula.
The number of songs she typically plays on her latest tour: The setlist more or less split 50/50 between Sour and Guts. As fans would expect, Rodrigo has been blazing through all her hits. She has also been chucking in the occasional covers – headlining Madison Square Garden in New York recently, she duetted with 1990s singer-songwriter Jewel on the latter’s 1995 ballad You Were Meant For Me.
“I became aware of her, I think, during 'Drivers License'. I liked her ’90s aesthetic,” Jewel told Billboard. “It’s a little edgy but very approachable. She’s writing these songs, and I love them. So I was excited to go out, I was excited to meet her.”
The number of streams – in millions – that Rodrigo has clocked up monthly on Spotify. She has also sold more than 17 million albums.
The number of fans who packed the Live at the Marquee venue in Cork to watch Rodrigo kick off the European leg of the Sour tour in 2020. She described her first Irish gig as “one of the most fun shows in my life”. Earlier in the day, Rodrigo had been spotted strolling around the southern city, and she even queued to buy a crepe in Gino's.
