Brilliant Songs #41: Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License”

Sometimes an artist comes along who just knocks the legs right out from under you, and after you’ve picked yourself up you’re left wondering how such seemingly natural, God-given talent could have developed to the degree it has. (Though one of the answers is surely “lots of hard work.”)

This sense of amazement is all the more the case when the artist is a mere 20 years old, with a monster hit already in her rear view mirror and three Grammys on her shelf, still shining brightly after a debut album of all original material when she was 18 shot her into the stratosphere, a veritable babe in the musical woods.

…the few bits of data on a card underlie every avenue of grief and anger she explores as adulthood’s losses and emotional scarring are revealed as the costs of being human, and vulnerable, and alive.

We can’t always tell what any given artist’s long-term trajectory might be. All manner of obstacles and missteps can intrude to combust and scatter a young shooting star.

That said, to listen in on the raw poetry, emotiveness and clear melodic line in the voice of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” is to suspect we are witness to the mere beginnings of what might well become a storied singer-songwriter career on the order of a Joni Mitchell, a Paul Simon, an Alanis Morisette, complemented, as her voice matures, by the shape-shifting vocalise common to jazz singers.

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Like most artists, Rodrigo writes about what she knows best and most challenges her self-understanding and larger understanding of the ways of the world. At this song’s writing when she was just 17 and no doubt still today, that would be: young love.

Now, our bias as adults is to look almost bemusedly at the foibles of young love. (Woe unto us, however, if we do so with young folk dear to us.)

But if love is to make a mark on the lovers at all, it has to, at some level, reflect an already maturing love, bathing in the fierce urgencies of desire and possessiveness (of both self and the beloved) as they confront the awareness—and fear—of love’s ever-possible demise.

“Drivers License” addresses the various obsessions wrought by this clash with a lovely and smart poetic device: the singer’s real-life attainment of a driver’s license, laden with symbolic import that most teenagers can barely fathom.

Rodrigo sings directly into the heart of it, though. The imagined freedom of incipient adulthood signified by the few bits of data on a card underlie every avenue of grief and anger she explores as adulthood’s losses and emotional scarring are revealed as the costs of being human, and vulnerable, and alive.

Rodrigo’s big themes thus far—desire, love, pain, loss—are hardly new. (Her two album titles are “Sour” followed by the recently released “Guts,” and yes, she spills some…)

But she passes the true artist’s test of either saying something new (a huge challenge this far along in the human project), or saying something old in a new way.

She meets the latter part of this challenge beautifully, both in the lyrics themselves and in the tender, exquisitely rendered modulations of her voice, raw and ripped wide open in the early stanzas that project unfettered, desperate need. By the end, though, she shifts to perhaps not acceptance but at least resignation, her voice flattening out from its previous meek and pleading tone to a sense of finality and closure, a period at the end not only of the sentence, but the whole chapter representing this phase in her life.

Let’s give it a listen now before returning for some brief closing commentary. Immediately below is a very recently released (October 2) live version by BBC Radio.

One oft-noted feature of Rodrigo’s live performances is how closely they track her studio recordings in the pure quality of both her voice and piano playing, and Rodrigo does not disappoint here. You can get a good feel for that quality by comparing the live performance to the studio version immediately following (which includes the lyrics and is also just another good way to hear the song a second time).

Original lyrics are also printed down below for your ready reference.

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When I ran Rodrigo’s name past my 25-year-old daughter she responded mostly with a “Meh…”, before suggesting that the singer is overplayed on the pop airwaves to the point of exhaustion. News to me, of course, who just happened to stumble upon her in a recent “New Yorker” magazine interview and am therefore fresh with the exuberance of a new discovery in my old and getting-ever-older age.

Turns out she broke into the mediascape via a Disney Channel show seven years ago, followed by Disney’s “mockumentary” entitled  High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, which she starred in from 2019 through her departure to pursue her musical career last year.

In the midst of it all, she released “Drivers License” as a single in 2021, watching it become the runaway hit that helped so exhaust my daughter. I should also note that her 9-year-old stepdaughter knows all the words to every Rodrigo song, which is no small feat for both the artist and her listeners, especially given she also draws the attention of the “New Yorker,” “Rolling Stone” and other august media from around the world.

In any case, I feel my daughter’s pain, given my own allergies, developed over many years and too many listens, to various songs I loved when they first caught my ear and lodged themselves deep in my brain stem. (“Horse With No Name,” anyone?)

My own appreciation for Rodrigo is accompanied by full acknowledgment that even after two well-received albums reflecting an emotionally articulate, poised sensibility, she remains so very young, with concerns far from my current life trajectory.

But mere relatability is hardly the point in evaluating music. Or at least it shouldn’t be.

Talent at any given age, with the concerns of a particular age, is no less remarkable and worthy simply because it speaks to that age. The important question is whether it speaks to that age with insight, craft, creativity, and the sheer energy to make it noteworthy, authentic and true, and not just a piece of over-stylized fluff.

If it answers that question in the affirmative, then it is worthy ipso facto, and should be acknowledged as such. There’s a reason I still feel compelled to sing along so lustily to a piece of ancient ear candy such as “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” after all…

So Rodrigo need not apologize for being so fully out there with the crushed heart, the confused, solipsistic questions ( “I just can’t imagine how you could be so okay now that I’m gone/Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me”), the sense of betrayal and shattered dreams. All of it is brought to a delicate peak in the barely audible but therefore all the more plaintive opening line of the final chorus: “I know we weren’t perfect, but I’ve never felt this way for no one.” 

Then at stanza’s end: “Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street.”

Which she repeats as a final sign-off line with a “Yeah” in front of it, the voice no longer tremulous and disbelieving, but staring reality in the face, even in her pain. The girl’s gonna be all right, we realize.

Yeah, the girl has made a fine song of it, and she is gonna be all right.

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            DRIVERS LICENSE

Got my driver’s license last week
Like we always talked about
‘Cause you were so excited for me
To finally drive up to your house
But today I drove through the suburbs
Crying ’cause you weren’t around

And you’re probably with that blonde girl
Who always made me doubt
She’s so much older than me
She’s everything I’m insecure about
Yeah, today, I drove through the suburbs
‘Cause how could I ever love someone else?

And I know we weren’t perfect, but I’ve never felt this way for no one
And I just can’t imagine how you could be so okay now that I’m gone
Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me
‘Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street

And all my friends are tired
Of hearing how much I miss you, but
I kinda feel sorry for them
‘Cause they’ll never know you the way that I do
Yeah, today, I drove through the suburbs
And pictured I was driving home to you

And I know we weren’t perfect, but I’ve never felt this way for no one, oh
And I just can’t imagine how you could be so okay now that I’m gone
I guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me
‘Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street

Red lights, stop signs
I still see your face in the white cars, front yards
Can’t drive past the places we used to go to 
‘Cause I still fuckin’ love you, babe
Ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh-ooh

Sidewalks we crossed
I still hear your voice in the traffic, we’re laughing
Over all the noise
God, I’m so blue, know we’re through
But I still fuckin’ love you, babe
Ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh-ooh

I know we weren’t perfect, but I’ve never felt this way for no one 
And I just can’t imagine how you could be so okay now that I’m gone
Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me
‘Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street

Yeah, you said forever, now I drive alone past your street 

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Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing.

Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos (except for the books) grace the rotating banner at top of page.
 https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/

Library books photo by Larry Rose, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com

Rodrigo portrait top of page by Rob Corder, East Bay, California http://www.robcorder.com

Young driver by Logan Fisher https://unsplash.com/@loganrfisher

Heart on a fence by Jamez Picard, Canada https://unsplash.com/@truemedia