Olivia Rodrigo
Olivia Rodrigo (born February 20, 2003, Murrieta, California, U.S.) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress who first gained popularity with a role on the television show High School Musical: The Musical—The Series (2019–) and who later launched a successful music career.
Rodrigo grew up in Temecula, California. Her father was a family therapist of Filipino heritage, and her mother was a teacher of German and Irish ancestry. Rodrigo began taking singing and acting lessons at an early age and a few years later added piano lessons. About the same time, she started writing songs.
In 2015 Rodrigo won the lead role in the musical Grace Stirs Up Success in the American Girl series of family movies. The next year she was cast as Paige Olvera on the Disney Channel TV show Bizaardvark. The series chronicles the comedic adventures of Paige and her best friend, both of whom hope to become famous by writing songs and creating music videos, which they post on their online channel Bizaardvark. After the show ended in 2019, Rodrigo began starring on Disney’s High School Musical: The Musical—The Series. Building on the success of the movie of the same name (and its two sequels), the TV series follows a group of high-school drama club members as they prepare and stage school performances. Rodrigo wrote and performed the song “All I Want” for a 2019 episode. The following year “Just for a Moment,” which she sang and wrote with costar Joshua Bassett, was also featured on the show.
Rodrigo continued writing and performing songs. In 2021 she released the single “Drivers License,” which she cowrote. A popular pop ballad about teenage heartbreak, it quickly hit number one on the Billboard Top 100. She became the youngest person at the time to top that chart. The song also broke the Spotify records for the most streams of a non-holiday song in a day (about 17 million) and in a week (almost 66 million). A few months later Rodrigo released “Deja Vu.” She cowrote the pop hit, which debuted at number eight on the Billboard Top 100. She thus became the first singer to have her first two singles debut in the top 10 on that chart. The songs were included on her first album, Sour (2021), which features a blend of pop, folk, and alternative rock influences. The concert movie Olivia Rodrigo: Driving Home 2 U (2022) documents the making of the record. At the Grammy Awards in 2022, Rodrigo won for best new artist, best pop solo performance for “Drivers License,” and best pop vocal album for Sour.