Gen Z’s Brad/Jen/Angelina love triangle… but make it a DCOM.
Olivia Rodrigo’s debut single “Drivers License” has reigned over the number one spot on USA’s Top 100 chart since its release on January 8, 2021. The song has over 100 million streams on Spotify, and even celebs are posting about it! The breakup anthem queen herself, Taylor Swift, congratulated Rodrigo on the song’s success.
Aside from the fact that the song is a total bop, (you’re lying if you haven’t belted it in the car yet), what’s with all the hype?
The love saga behind it.
Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett star in the Disney+ series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. In pure Disney Channel fashion, the stars’ onscreen love sparked offscreen as well. The two were rumored to be dating from late 2019 until they broke up in mid 2020. As any Gen Z star would, Rodrigo took to Instagram to hint at the split. She posed in a beach pic on Insta in an iconic, Britney Spears-esque, “Dump Him” shirt.
Bassett sparked dating rumors when he was spotted with former Disney star, Sabrina Carpenter, in June 2020. Moving on awfully quick there Joshua…
Rodrigo recounts the relationship, breakup, and hints at Bassett’s ‘new girl’ in “Drivers License.” The lyrics are refreshingly honest and relatable. She sings, “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.” There’s always someone else who seems to have everything you don’t. Reveling in that insecurity or giving in to that pinch of envy for a moment, doesn’t make you a bad person, it makes you human.
Even if you’re ~adulting~ now, we were all sixteen once. Though most of us were walking circles around the mall, Starbucks Frappuccino in hand, and not filming a Disney show, teenage heartbreak is pretty universal. No. One. Is. Safe. Whether your love story was epic, or it began and ended during a single lunch period in the 7th grade, we’ve all had to deal with the sadness and frustration that rejection and breakups entail.
Why didn’t the relationship work out? How can he not still love her? Who is the blonde girl? We must know!
Just as fans decoded the lyrics to untangle the complicated love story between Bassett and Rodrigo, Bassett dropped his own song “Lies, lies lies,” seemingly in response to “Drivers License.” He hit back with some pretty tough lyrics (a bit harsh if you ask me). “So you're telling them it's all my fault. You're the victim this time, oh… you've been lying to yourself, lie to everyone else.”
Just when we thought the drama could not get even more chaotic… enter - the blonde girl who always made Olivia doubt.
Sabrina Carpenter released her song “Skin” on January 22, 2021.
Carpenter’s lyrics are indirectly directed towards Rodrigo. Although she claimed in an Instagram post that the song wasn’t specifically about one person, some of the lyrics are a bit sus. “Maybe then we could pretend there's no gravity in the words we write. Maybe you didn't mean it, maybe ‘blonde’ was the only rhyme.” Woah. All the lies, accusations, and hidden meanings in all three songs are almost as hard to figure out, as it is to find a word that actually rhymes with blonde.
Now Rodrigo never confirmed the “blonde” in her song was Carpenter, but this seems like the closest to a confirmation fans will get.
Bassett and Carpenter plan on releasing their duet, “We Both Know” soon, so who knows what they’ll tell us but not really tell us next.
And let’s be honest, who really cares?
Everyone.