FILIPINA American Disney star and singer Olivia Rodrigo has returned with a follow-up to her debut smash hit “Drivers License.”
Rodrigo on Thursday, April 1, released “Deja Vu” from her upcoming and highly-anticipated debut album out on May 21.
In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, the star of “The High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” shared that she wrote the track a month after writing “Drivers License.”
“I’m sort of obsessed with the concept of déjà vu, like I really like that concept, I get déjà vu all the time. And so I thought it would be a cool play on words to use déjà vu as a metaphor for this very universal thing that happens when you break up with someone and they get with somebody else, and see them living the life that you lived,” said Rodrigo.
On January 8, she 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 total, “Drivers License” has now racked up 1.033 billion streams, according to Billboard. It is the first song to reach the milestone in 2021.
Rodrigo admitted that she felt the pressure to follow up “Drivers License” with another hit.
“The success of ‘Drivers License’ has been a huge lesson in how you just need to, when you put a song out, you just need to let it go. And it’s everyone else’s song to interpret, it’s not your song anymore,” she told Lowe.
“But it is sort of difficult having that be my first song ever, because the success is so immense,” she added.
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.
