82 Time December 27, 2021/January 3, 2022
2021 ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR
solo artist ever to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard
Hot 100, where her song stayed for eight weeks.
Soon after, Rodrigo was performing on Saturday
Night Live, which had already aired a sketch about
bros in a bar weeping along with the lyrics (“I got
my driver’s license 55 years ago—why is this hit-
ting me so hard?”). Halsey sent Rodrigo a cake,
Cardi B shouted her out on Twitter, and Taylor
Swift offered her props on Instagram.
Any questions about whether Rodrigo could re-
peat the success of “Drivers License” were put to
rest when she released Sour on May 21. The album,
scruffier than the symmetrical, beat-driven music
that tends to dominate pop culture, announced her
as a serious artist. With moody, confessional lyrics
that added chapters to the story told in “Drivers
License,” Sour offered something we needed after
more than a year of unending distress: an outlet
for anger and permission to cry. Hailed by crit-
ics, it also continued Rodrigo’s streak of smashing
records: with approximately 385 million streams,
Sour became Spotify’s most popular release by
a female artist in its first week.
After dropping her music in pandemic- era isola-
tion, Rodrigo sang at multiple awards shows, earned
seven Grammy nominations—including Best New
Artist, and Song, Record and Album of the Year—
and was revealed to have the most-streamed album
and song of the year around the world on Spotify.
Somewhere along the way, she even appeared at
the White House with President Joe Biden to en-
courage young people to get vaccinated. And on
Dec. 6, she announced a 41-city tour for 2022.
For now, Rodrigo’s taking things one step at a
time. She moved into her own place this year, but
her parents are still a big part of her routine (she
hasn’t quite figured out the whole grocery shop-
ping and laundry thing yet). She knew the shape
of her world was forever changed right after she
released “Drivers License”—she shelved her fan-
tasy of attending Columbia University—but she
isn’t forcing anything. “I’d be lying if I said there
wasn’t any pressure,” she says. “But I sometimes re-
member: This happened 10 months ago. You don’t
have to have it all figured out yet.”RodRigo has been woRking toward her mete-
oric rise for more than a decade. A Filipino Ameri-
can, she grew up the only child of a therapist and
a teacher in Temecula, Calif., and started writing
songs, taking voice lessons and auditioning for
acting jobs in grade school. Her first big role was
in Grace Stirs Up Success, a 2015 American Girl
movie about a spunky baker. By 12, she was playinga vlogger on Disney’s Bizaardvark, for which she
learned to play the guitar and took the family to
L.A. In 2019, Rodrigo made the jump to another
Disney show that would change everything for
her: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,
a reboot of the hit movies.
As Nini, a theater kid cast as the lead in her
school’s production of High School Musical while
going through a breakup with her co-star (an in-
stance of art imitating life, if you believe the gossip
about “Drivers License”), Rodrigo deftly stepped
into the role of an ingenue balancing ambition and
heartache. She was also able to showcase her song-
writing skills: when they needed a refective song
for Nini, showrunner Tim Federle, who had seen
videos of Rodrigo playing songs she wrote on Insta-
gram, invited her to give it a shot. He sent her an
email, with her mom copied, but noted that school-
work and SAT prep should come first. Just a few
days later, Rodrigo played him a draft. “She plugs
into something that is so well observed and so raw,”
Federle says. Her song “All I Want” took off on‘This happened10 months ago.You don’t have to haveit all figured out yet.’