Write a song like “Driver’s License” – Olivia Rodrigo

WHY THIS SONG?
“Driver’s License” is the debut single by Olivia Rodrigo. It got a lot of attention for the way it raced up the music charts and piled up millions of listens on stream-on-demand sites like Spotify and Apple Music. It quickly rose to #1 on the Pop music charts in the U.S and U.K with double platinum sales.

Rodrigo already had a throng of fans from her roles in successful Disney TV series like High School Musical, and there was a strong marketing push for the song from the record label as well (which is one reason artists still sign record deals).

But all of that does not take away from the fact that the song has a ton of appeal and is extremely well crafted. So, let’s pull it apart to see what makes it work and get some ideas for songs of your own.

“Driver’s License” by Olivia Rodrigo

Songwriters: Daniel Nigro, Olivia Rodrigo

TECHNIQUES TO HEAR AND TRY: 

  • Write a lyric with a strong storyline. 
  • Get your melody “in shape.”
  • Maintain a Singer-Songwriter vibe in a Pop song.

Listen to the song. Read the lyrics

Read the lyric here.

Watch on YouTube. 

Watch on youTube

GENRE/STYLE: Pop/Singer-Songwriter

(What is a genre? Watch this video.)

Clearly, this song is in the Pop genre… or is it? It doesn’t have the rhythm-driven sound of a Dance/Pop diva like Dua Lipa. Nor does it have the cool, urban vibe of R&B/Pop a la Ariana Grande’s “Positions.” So what kind of Pop is it?

In contrast to other current Pop styles, this lyric gives us an intimate, revealing look inside the singer’s emotional life while the melody, with its soaring chorus, has more motion and lift than recent Pop/Dance or Pop/R&B hits. All of this, plus the featured acoustic piano, suggests that the song is closer to the style of Lewis Capaldi than Katy Perry. So, let’s call it Pop/Singer-Songwriter.

SONG STRUCTURE

At just over four minutes, “Driver’s License” makes it clear that listeners don’t have a problem with length so long as the song keeps them engaged. The structure has three verses with six lines each, a chorus with long melody lines, and a bridge that’s twice the length you would expect. It all adds up to extra running time, even though there’s a very short intro (8 seconds) and no pre-choruses at all.

Here’s the song structure:

VERSE/VERSE/CHORUS
VERSE/CHORUS
BRIDGE
CHORUS

VERSE 1 begins with “I got my driver’s license last week…”
VERSE 2 starts with “And you’re probably with that blonde girl…”
VERSE 3 opens with “And all my friends are tired…”

CHORUS: “And I know we weren’t perfect …”

BRIDGE (2:25): “Red light, stop signs.”

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LYRICS

CRAFT A LYRIC WITH A STRONG STORYLINE

This is a conversational song with a lot of words coming at the listener in a steady stream. It’s almost as if the singer is sharing her thoughts as they occur to her.

This style has been popularized by singer-songwriters like Ed Sheeran, Lauv, Alec Benjamin, Julia Michaels, and Pop/Dance artists like The Chainsmokers (“Closer”) and Alessia Cara (“Stay”). It doesn’t work well for the Film & TV market—too wordy to use under dialogue—but it’s great for keeping listeners involved with a song on the radio and online. And it’s good for telling a story.

What’s the timeline?
In the opening lines, the singer gives us all the history we need to know. She starts by telling us she got her driver’s license and shares the plans she made with her boyfriend. Then she admits he’s no longer around and she’s devastated.

I got my driver’s license last week
Just like we always talked about
‘Cause you were so excited for me
To finally drive up to your house
But today I drove through the suburbs
Crying ’cause you weren’t around

There’s plenty here to pull listeners into the story. But is it too much? This is a lot to take in during a single verse, so the lyric needs to make it easy to understand and follow along.

Read this verse out loud and you’ll see how clearly the information is conveyed. Notice how every line in “Driver’s License” is tightly focused on a single bit of information, leading listeners through the situation step by step.

TIP: Keep your timeline in mind as you tell your story. Don’t jump ahead or go back to pick up a piece of information you missed. Try to keep things organized in a way that makes sense to the listener while answering questions you think they might have.

Use imagery to tell your story
Visual images and actions are a great way to show your audience what’s happening: “I got my driver’s license.” “I drove through the suburbs.” “I drove alone past your street.” We can see what the singer is doing.

This is very different from universal lyrics for film and television in which we keep these kinds of story details out of the lyric, letting the script tell the story.

You’ll notice that in this lyric, emotions are expressly named (“excited,” “crying,” “doubt,” “insecure,” “love”). This is also different from songs created for film and TV in which emotions are described using physical sensations, comparisons, or words with emotional associations.

Find out more about writing emotion-based lyrics that work for film & television.

– Try It Now –

Listen to a few more songs with strong story lines, songs like “Attention” (Charlie Puth), “Shape of You” (Ed Sheeran), “I Drive Your Truck” (Lee Brice), “Eastside” (Khalid, Halsey), “Fast Car” (Tracy Chapman).

As you listen, notice…

  1. How they work the story details into the lyric.
  2. How they use visual details and action to show listeners what’s happening.
  3. How they lay out the story: Do they start at the beginning? Drop you into the middle? Or later?

MELODY

When you have a song with a lot of lyric activity going on, like this one, you need a melody that’s well organized and easy to remember. If the melody is wandering around, unfocused, or changing too much your audience will tune out. The solution: Rewrite that melody.

But anyone who’s ever tried to fix up a melody knows that’s easier said than done. Although it’s easy to change a lyric that consists of individual lines and words, we don’t think of melody that way. Instead, we hear it as a long string of tones. The string in the verse is different from the one in the chorus, but that’s about all we really notice. This way of thinking makes it hard to know where or how to change things. So we often keep the first melody that comes along.

WHAT IS THE SHAPE OF YOUR MELODY?

Even if you don’t play an instrument or read notes, you can figure out what your melody is doing and rewrite it to give it more strength. The trick is to picture your melody. Look at its shape.

Imagine a line that rises as the notes in your melody rise and descends as the notes go lower. Draw a rough sketch of that line and you’ll begin to see your melody’s shape. (This is basically what notes do when they go up and down the staff.)

Here’s the shape of the chorus melody in “Driver’s License.” Listen to the melody as you look at the picture. (Please excuse my lousy drawing skills.)

On the first line of the chorus, the melody climbs up in steps, like a ladder, and then descends a little. It makes the same shape on the second line but with a different ending. Then it repeats a series of up and down shapes for the third line (“Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote…”). Then it makes a slow descent on the last line.

This is an interesting melody shape that appears, in a general way, in many other hit songs. In a four-line chorus, the first two melody lines are often very similar. The third line has shorter phrases that repeat. The fourth line creates a sense of resolution at the end of the chorus.

You could rewrite this chorus melody by changing its shape. The first two lines might start up high and descend. The third line might have fewer repeats. The resulting melody will sound different.

This is a great way to learn how to write a strong melody: study hit songs and draw the melody shape for each line. Look for places where the shapes repeat and where they change. Pretty soon you’ll start to notice melody shapes that are common to many songs. That’s because listeners like those shapes.

– Try It Now –

Listen to this song and notice the shape of the chorus melody. Then listen to some of your favorite songs and look for more melody shapes.

Just for fun, start a new melody by drawing a series of shapes. A good melody will repeat one or more of the shapes, like this song does. You can sketch anywhere from four to eight lines. The specific notes you choose and the rhythm of the notes are up to you. But try to follow the contour of the lines you drew. Keep playing with your melody until you find something you like, and then add a few chords and a rhythm groove.

CHORDS

To play along with “Driver’s License,” guitar players capo on the 3rd fret, keyboard players transpose +3.

VERSE
| G | Em | C | G | – 2X

CHORUS
| C | G | C | G | – 2X
| EM | D | G | BM7 | C
| C | D | G |

BRIDGE
| Em | C | G | D | – 2X

See the chords with lyrics here.

PRODUCTION

KEEP THE SINGER-SONGWRITER VIBE ALIVE

Even though this song is at the top of the Pop music charts, there’s still a lot of the Singer-Songwriter style in it: intimate, emotionally vulnerable, and an expression of the singer’s own experience.

There are a couple of ways the production is helping to support that. One is by highlighting piano or guitar as the main instrument in the track, as if to remind us of the way the song was originally written—a lone singer playing on their instrument. Notice how often the piano appears as a solo or featured instrument. Only on the bridge does it really disappear into the track for a moment.

The other way they keep the Singer-Songwriter style going is to allow the singer to express character in her vocal. There’s plenty of personality in the way she slides into and out of notes, changes volume levels, and lets her voice crack a little. And although the vocal pitch is very good throughout, it isn’t perfectly tuned the way a big Dance/Pop vocal would be.

READ MORE HIT SONG GUIDES ON THIS SITE and learn from the hits!