Olivia Rodrigo
“It’s not too late for us to make a difference.”
Is anyone else absolutely obsessed with Olivia Rodrigo? Since the release of “Drivers License” in 2021, she has skyrocketed to becoming one of Hollywood's most successful actors and singers at only twenty-one. Whether through her music, Bizaardvark, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, or the American Girl Doll movie, Grace Stirs up Success, Olivia truly made her mark as a celebrity.
Olivia Rodrigo began acting professionally at age twelve when she played Grace Thomas in the Grace Stirs Up Success. In 2016, she starred in Disney Channel's Bizaardvark for three seasons. Following the show’s end, she was cast as Nini Salazar-Roberts in the hit Disney+ show High School Musical: The Musical: The Series in 2019. Her popularity as both an actor and a singer catapulted from this role. She slowly entered the music industry by writing and performing songs for the show, including the promotional single, “All I Want.” She left the show in 2022, at the end of its third and penultimate season to focus on her music career.
Olivia Rodrigo signed her first record deal with Geffen Records in 2020. Following Taylor Swift’s fight starting in 2019 to own her masters, Olivia Rodrigo followed in her footsteps and negotiated to own her masters as part of her contract. Her first song, “Drivers License” was released on January 8, 2021. The song broke multiple Spotify records and debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. On May 21, Sour was released and debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 200 chart. At the 64th Annual Grammy Awards, she received seven nominations and won “Best New Artist,” “Best Pop Vocal Album,” and “Best Pop Solo Performance” for “Drivers License.”
On September 8, 2023, Olivia released her sophomore album, Guts. The album’s lead single, “Vampire,” was released in June of that year and debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. This made her the first artist to ever debut the lead singles from their first two albums on the Hot 100 chart. In February 2024, she embarked on her Guts World Tour, where she will perform 77 shows across North America and Europe.
A week after the start of the Guts World Tour, Olivia launched Fund 4 Good, an initiative to provide equal support for women and girls to receive education, reproductive rights, and prevention from gender-based violence. In support, Olivia is donating a portion of all ticket sales to local abortion funds. In addition, for her North American leg of the tour, she has partnered with the National Network of Abortion Funds. While most celebrities wait years in the business before speaking out and fighting for the rights they believe in, Olivia Rodrigo stepped up only a few years into her music career. Even with the consequences she and her success could face by fighting for equal reproductive rights, Olivia did not hesitate to stand up extremely early in her career to fight for what she believes in.
