Olivia Rodrigo had quite the 2021.
With her debut album SOUR, the singer-songwriter and actress paid tribute to her idols and created the most succinct, relatable account of the trails and tribulations of being a modern-day teenager since Lorde's equally influential debut, Pure Heroine.
With her second album GUTS, Olivia not only claimed her second Official Chart Double, but proved that she was more than just a one-hit wonder. With tracks like the bloody lament Vampire, to kitschy, pop-punk tunes like bad idea right? and get him back! Olivia successfully stepped into her sophom*ore era more sonically experimental and emotionally mature than ever before.
Here are Olivia Rodrigo's Official Top 20 biggest songs in the UK, revealed her exclusively for the first time.
MORE: See where all of Olivia Rodrigo's singles have charted in the UK
5. Vampire
Official Singles Chart peak: Number 1
Total UK chart units: 920,000
A baroque, gothic lament on a parasitic social-climber, vampire was a truly singular start to the GUTS era. Whereas drivers license saw Olivia look back with regret and sadness at a former beau, vampire proved just how far she'd come, it's a howling, blood-letting attack that holds no punches.
"Blood sucker," Olivia declares. "Fame f*cker." Vampire's success was no flash in the pan, either, it reached Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart, becoming her third Number 1 single overall. As things stand, Vampire also stands tall as Olivia's most physically-purchased single in the UK.
4. deja vu
Released: 2021
Official Singles Chart peak: Number 4
Total UK chart units: 1.1 million
How do you follow up the unexpectedly biggest debut single of the last 10 years? With a bracing, art-rock anti-single heavily inspired by Radiohead and Alfred Hitchco*ck, of course.
Obsession is the cornerstone of the hypnotic deja vu, probably Olivia's boldest artistic statement yet. It makes sense, then, that the track's music video pays tribute to cinema's ultimate ode to toxic fascination, Alfred Hitchco*ck's Vertigo.
3. traitor
Released: 2021
Official Singles Chart peak: Number 5
Total UK chart units: 1.2 million
You betrayed me! drivers license easily riffed on the Phoebe Bridgers' mode of hyper-specific lyricism and good 4 u carries the scorched touch of punk rock, but with traitor, the bleeding heart of SOUR, Olivia was entirely original.
Despite never being released as a single, traitor received a spirited live performance video from the SOUR prom and was the fourth UK Top 10 single to be birthed from SOUR, peaking at Number 5. It's the biggest non-single on the LP, with 1.2 chart units and over 138 million streams.
2. drivers license
Released: 2021
Official Singles Chart peak: Number 1
Total UK chart units: 2 million
No-one, we expect not even Olivia herself, could have guessed the instantaneous success drivers license saw upon its debut in January 2021. A perfect storm of promotion, gossip and virality, the topic of the lament may have been discussed ad infinitum (and doesn't bare repeating here) but what sticks with you long after the chinese whispers dissipate is just how fully formed drivers license is for a debut single.
It pays homage to Phoebe Bridgers, Lorde, Taylor Swift and Sky Ferreira, but also manages to mark out Olivia on her own terms, in her own voice. Her first UK Number 1 single, drivers license certainly wasn't her last, and it comes in second position, with 2 million total chart units and a blockbuster 234 million streams, and is Olivia's most-downloaded song overall.
1. good 4 u
Released: 2021
Official Singles Chart peak: Number 1
Total UK chart units: 2.3 million
It’s hard to create an instantly iconic, career-defining song, it’s even harder to follow on with another one that is not only better, it arguably blows everything else out of the water.
good 4 u, straight out of the gate, plays like an instant classic. If drivers license saw Olivia drown in her feelings, in this anarchic banger we witnessed her boil the ocean and salt the ground, so nothing good could grow there again. With its equally cheeky and inspired Petra Collins-directed visuals (taking inspiration from demonic teen comedy Jennifer's Body), good 4 u was the definitive answer to many questions that swirled around Olivia in the run-up to the SOUR. Mainly, that she was here to stay. And she had more than one zeitgeist-defining hit up her sleeve. She actually had two.
Officially Olivia's biggest song in the UK to date, as according to Official Charts Company data, good 4 u has amassed an amazing 2.3 million total UK chart units and over 277 million streams.
