FILIPINA American Disney star and singer Olivia Rodrigo has followed up her chart-topping singles with a new track from her upcoming debut album.
Rodrigo on Friday, May 14, released “Good 4 U,” the third single off of her highly-anticipated album “Sour” out on May 21.
In her Billboard cover story, the star of “The High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” admitted that she didn’t want to be “pigeonholed” as “the heartbreak girl.”
“At first I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be pigeonholed,’” Rodrigo said, adding that she tried including love songs in her album, but they didn’t feel “authentic” to her.
“I’m a songwriter who writes from a place of authenticity and truth. And truthfully, love and happiness and everything weren’t feelings that I was feeling at the time,” she explained.
On January 8, Rodrigo released “Drivers License,” which quickly dominated the charts of major streaming platforms.
It climbed to no. 1 on the U.S. iTunes Top 100 chart, Apple Music’s Top 100: Global chart, and Spotify’s Global Top 100.
The song is also now the longest-running number-one song on the Billboard Global 200, spending eight weeks at the top and surpassing BTS’s “Dynamite” and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
In April, Rodrigo followed her debut smash hit with “Deja Vu,” which made her the first artist to have her first two singles debut in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100.
“To a certain degree, having really commercially successful music means that lots of people are really affected by your music and really like it, and that’s awesome in and of itself,” Rodrigo told Billboard.
“If my music becomes really commercially successful, that’s incredible, and that means I did a good job,” she added.
Rodrigo is set to perform “Good 4 U” on Saturday Night Live on May 15, ahead of the release of “Sour.”
The official music video, directed by Petra Collins, has garnered over 2 million views on Youtube since its Friday release.
Rodrigo was born to an American mother of Irish and German descent, and a Fil-Am father.
In an interview with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), Rodrigo talked about the Fil-Am side of her family.
“My great-grandfather immigrated here from the Philippines when he was just a teenager.
He’s my grandma’s dad, and my grandpa is also Filipino as well,” she said.
“My dad grew up in a house where they were always making Filipino food, his grandpa always spoke Tagalog. All of those traditions have trickled down to our generation. Every Thanksgiving we have lumpia, and things like that,” she added.
Rodrigo also revealed that she wants to go to the Philippines one day.
“I have never been to the Philippines, but I really, really want to. We still have extended family there, but I’ve never met them. That’s on my bucket list, definitely,” she said.
