What makes a hit a hit?
How can the extraordinary popularity of Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Driver’s License’ be explained?
Source: “Driver’s License” official video
When asked about his thoughts on the new global sensation hit song “Driver’s License” in an Instagram Q&A, singer-songwriter Niall Horan wrote “I’m just happy ‘songs’ are back. There’s been a severe lack of ‘songs’ for a while.”
The curious late-night musings of the star prompts an interesting question: what makes a song a “song”? Is it the way it is made, or the way it is heard? There have been numerous songs released in the past year which have dominated Spotify charts and radio stations; but somehow “Driver’s License” is the one to have been granted the magic of media attention. Hence the question seemingly asked on every mainstream music platform: what makes “Driver’s License” different from the rest?
Professors Michael Mauskapf and Noah Askin of Columbia Business School and INSEAD conducted a research paper on this question, “What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music.” By sifting through Billboard charts, they found that top hits, although sharing some elements of “mainstream”-ness, historically diverge from previous trends, potentially suffering “a penalty for being too similar to their peers.” Moreover, they claim songs are not only judged on their quality, but also on their relevance to the cultural climate. The three conditions “Driver’s License” supposedly fulfills, then, are: the song is good; the song is similar, but different from its predecessors; and the song is culturally relevant.
1. The song itself is good
With a dreamy synth-based bridge so reminiscent of Lorde’s Grammy-winning album Melodrama, brutally honest lyrics as an ode to the heartbreak messiah Taylor Swift herself, and undeniably strong vocals tinted by emotional teenage tinniness pushing the song forward, Olivia Rodrigo successfully ties together the components of hit songs in the past decade and makes them her own. Considering the answer to the question “What makes art good?” is often “It makes me feel something,” Rodrigo’s adolescence gives her the space to liberally and unapologetically feel heartbreak, and in doing so gives her listeners that same space too. The melody and the beats build just as the story of the song-writing does, and at its absolute essence, it is hard to deny that the song has all the makings of a very good, and daresay iconic pop anthem.
2. The song is similar, but different from its predecessors
Rodrigo is close enough to Lorde for the comparison, but just a bit cleaner; she’s a curious amalgamation of Swift’s teenage lexicon with her pop sound, and a bit more grit. “Driver’s License,” just like its sisters on the recent charts, has had immense success on TikTok, but rather than going viral because of a new dance or video trend, it went viral because of Rodrigo’s own reputation. She is the new Disney, the young Disney, the Disney still looking for its wunderkind to follow the likes of Selena Gomez, the Jonas Brothers, Zendaya- and perhaps they have found it in Rodrigo. Both “Driver’s License” and Rodrigo are close, but distant enough to their predecessors by just that smidge, to be revered rather than penalised.
3. The song is culturally relevant
As with most songs written by singer-songwriters, “Driver’s License” was immediately subject to intense scrutiny from the general public. People have always been spurred on by reminiscing, but even more so now, when life is split into “pre” and “post”. The sudden reappearance of Disney love triangles is exactly the nostalgia factor Netflix reboots have been trying to harness, and Rodrigo’s relationships were brought to the surface and dissected almost hungrily as layers of an alleged co-star romance were unveiled. More than this, it is also Rodrigo’s own voice, both honest and humble, which makes it so easily accessible for a wide audience. In this current age of media, artists no longer seem to be pursuing perfection. Instead, we watch deeply, murderously flawed protagonists navigate chaos in its extremes and mundanes, in a pursuit not be perfect but rather to be real. And maybe after this wreckage of a year people didn’t want a song of hope or satisfaction, but rather a song to scream to in their cars. The ability to capture reality is much more respectable these days than to capture idealism, and “Driver’s License” might be an homage to that.
It would be naive to discount the significance of going viral on TikTok. The app is one of the big winners of the lockdown, providing regular content when the entire world was trapped inside. In these times, virality on TikTok undeniably propels you to a staggering level of fame. However, “Driver’s License” stands apart from fellow TikTok hits. The Achilles' heel of TikTok virality is the trademark feature of media consumption in this generation: being bitesize. Its audience’s short attention spans limit TikTok sounds to no more than a minute, thus condemning certifiable “TikTok famous” songs to a fame built on a 15-second long video. “Driver’s License” and its creeping tendrils in Disney, Taylor Swift, and gossip magazines, managed to escape this fate.
“Driver’s License” is the paradigm of virality. It colours in every box Mauskapf and Askin stencil out, and colours a little bit out as well, becoming a one-of-a-kind “song”. It came at just the right time; when the stifling, oppressive reality became too much for newsfeeds and when the nostalgia of a younger, more innocent time created a deep-set yearning for before. In some ways, it was so successful because of its success; the potential of a debut song charting at Number 1 was too satisfying an arc not to fulfil at this time, the single victory in a haystack. With so many pieces rolling into place, it’s worth wondering when we will experience a song in this way again, with so many pillars and ruins from which it sprouts that it becomes a beanstalk the week it was planted. It might be a long while before we get a “song” like this again.