Before her song “drivers license” became the biggest hit in the world, a select few were familiar with Olivia Rodrigo from Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, where she plays lead Nini Salazar-Roberts (alongside one Joshua Bassett). Not Rodrigo’s music producer, though. In the “Diary of a Song” video on “drivers license” for the New York Times, Daniel Nigro revealed he’s never seen HSMTMTS, never mind Rodrigo’s old Disney Channel show Bizaardvark. “I still have not, and Olivia tells me I’m not allowed to watch any of it,” said Nigro, who’s worked with Carly Rae Jepsen, Sky Ferreira, and Conan Gray. “It’s like a separate world for her.” Elsewhere in the video, Rodrigo also revealed that her mom recorded the track’s car noises after Rodrigo asked while she was working on the song in the studio. Now, where’s that recording engineer credit for Mama Rodrigo?
When asked about changing the song’s lyrics — like from “brunette girl” to “blonde girl,” thought to reference ex-boyfriend Bassett’s alleged new girlfriend Sabrina Carpenter — Rodrigo just chalked it up to getting to smooth out the song with a producer. And she gives all the credit to Nigro for another of her now-iconic lines: “I still fucking love you, babe,” in the bridge. “I think it’s actually really cool that I did, like, sort of swear in my first song,” Rodrigo said. “Like, look it, I’m an adult, I can, like, say — I’m not an adult, but I’m like 17.” Watch the full video for more “drivers license” details and to hear the original, all-falsetto take that sounded a bit more like Billie Eilish.
