The acceleration of time within the framework of “modern fame” is something Olivia Rodrigo knows all about. From Old Navy commercial to Disney star to pop star, Rodrigo’s trajectory was swift (no Taylor allusion meant). And perhaps not since Britney Spears has a “generational icon” emerged so quickly out of seemingly “nowhere” (indeed, Rodrigo has taken a lot of her “act” from Spears). But, of course, “nowhere” usually tends to mean: from the Disney factory. Which is precisely where Rodrigo found her footing in series that included Bizaardvark and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.
It was on the latter show where she met the eventual muse for the single that would launch her to worldwide recognition. In fact, all Joshua Bassett might ever really be known for, in the end, is helping to give us “drivers license” and Sour by being a proverbial cad. Telling her he loved her and all that other sort of “eternal love bullshit” he knew he’d never mean (at least not in the long-run). But Rodrigo was foolish and naïve enough at the time to take him at his word. And then endure him having the gall to backtrack via behavior that totally negated what he said in the beginning of their relationship (ergo a song like “1 step forward, 3 steps back”). When Rodrigo, apparently, was all shiny and new.
Just as she still is to fans (mostly of the tween and teen girl variety) who have found salvation in her oh so identifiable lyrics—even if some of the four- and five-year-olds singing about a guy being a sociopath probably isn’t yet too relatable (unless their dad is one, which is always a strong possibility). The same fans screaming these lyrics on her first-ever tour (both nationally and internationally). It was for the fans who could not make it out to one of her shows, however, that Rodrigo decided to create a documentary. One that comes across like a hybrid of what she already did with Sour Prom and what Taylor did with Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions. It’s in the latter that Swift uses the confessional nature of the record to herself get confessional about its creation. Which is the obvious intent behind Driving Home 2 U, intermixed with Rodrigo’s Sour Prom predilection for performing the songs within the context of “organic scenarios.”
Directed by Stacey Lee, whose sole previous credit is another documentary called Underplayed (about the gender disparity in the dance music world), the narrative is structured as an overt mix of what Rodrigo already did in Sour Prom meets the more soul-searching in-between musings that Rodrigo’s idol, Swift, gave during her own documentary. Except that Swift had the confidence to direct it herself (perhaps because Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions required very little technical or elaborate direction).
Like Swift with Jack Antonoff, Rodrigo also has a producer she “owes it all” to: Dan Nigro. It’s evident in watching Driving Home 2 U that the two have been on quite the journey together. A revelation made manifest when Nigro plays her a previously unreleased track called “Crying in the Parking Lot,” and agrees that said song was written “a long time ago, it was a year ago.” When Olivia was really sad. “And I’m still not over it. Geez.” This idea of grief—even when it occurs within a young person who can theoretically “bounce back” more quickly—having an expiration date in terms of an “acceptable amount of time” is something that has become toxic in our society. Along with thinking that a year is a “long time” when, in fact, it’s nothing. A drop in the bucket. It just feels like a lot because of the accelerated pace (as alluded to above) at which things happen in the current internet-driven landscape.
But something about Driving Home 2 U exudes a purity we haven’t seen rendered to the screen by a pop star in a while. And a lot of that has to do with the environment Rodrigo chooses to commune with on her road trip from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles—this being the sentimental route she took throughout the recording of Sour (having written the album in SLC because that’s where High School Musical: The Musical: The Series was being filmed a.k.a. the site of the Bassett trauma). The third song Rodrigo performs in the film, “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back” takes place as she’s passing through Valley of the Gods, Utah. It’s a majestic milieu that’s also barren—a fitting metaphor for this song’s particular content, of which Rodrigo noted, “I think loving someone who is so inconsistent is so challenging and just really anxiety-inducing and makes you feel so insecure and… it’s a really tough thing to feel like you’re walking on egg shells around someone you just want, you know, validation and love and support from. You feel like you can never really settle into that feeling of being, like, loved and accepted.”
These are obviously feelings that Swift has addressed many times in her own body of songwriting, from the very beginning of her career. And yet, at a certain part of her life (namely, with the release of folklore), she realized the dangers of being so personal. Rodrigo already seems to understand that hazard as well when speaking at one point to friend and fellow musician, Jacob Collier. She comprehends, long before Taylor did, that relying solely on heartbreak and devastation as a means to create songs can wreak havoc on the psyche (and the tabloids, so to speak). By the same token, she’s still at a phase in her life when everything is felt more profoundly, therefore the propensity for reacting more dramatically within the content of her music.
To substantiate that belief, Rodrigo is seemingly unabashed about having a framed picture of The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead album in the background when she sings us a rendition of the song that started it all, “drivers license.” And perhaps Morrissey is the only musician (apart from Robert Smith) in existence who ever stayed true to his moody teenage self… at a great cost, as we’ve seen. So maybe there’s a kind of foreshadowing at play here, even if Rodrigo is convinced her “sad girl” days are likely over (but darling, even Lana Del Rey’s aren’t).
Elsewhere on the odyssey, Rodrigo sits in one of those faux-seedy hotels (one that still miraculously has an old-school coffee maker on the desk) and recites something she wrote in her Notes app (the modern equivalent of a diary): “I know that I loved you so bad I let you treat me like that.” This being a decidedly naïve view of love, especially on the part of women, who want desperately to feel the same level of reciprocity from a man that they’ll debase themselves and suppress their own identity in the process. Perhaps not fully realizing that part of why they’re so determined to extract that love is because they know they won’t get it.
This leads into her singing “favorite crime” in Arcosanti, Arizona. A location that further plays up how well-curated and meticulously thought-out the sets for the documentary are. Rodrigo once again purges the memory of her ex by singing in this open-air environment. In contrast, this scene is followed with the other spectrum of a girl’s sadness: all-out rage. Specifically in the form of “good 4 u.” And Red Rock Canyon State Park in California is where she chooses to sing an especially dramatic rendition of it, complete with violins to really drive home that Piscean effect of self-martyrdom.
“enough for you” is where Olivia’s backstory explanation reminds one of an Angela Chase voiceover more than usual, specifically when she describes how the song arose from “when you’re, like, really deeply in love with someone and, you know, feeling like you aren’t good enough for someone who is your absolute world is, like, so so crushing.” It smacks of the tone Britney was rocking when she said, “We should just trust our president.”
Considering the scant number of songs actually at Rodrigo’s disposal to perform, we soon find the road trip coming to a close (the documentary being a clipped one hour and sixteen minutes) as she pulls up to a gas station in her Lorelai Gilmore-reminiscent Jeep in Amboy, California. With the backdrop of the Roy’s Motel & Café sign, Rodrigo sets the stage for “traitor.” Fittingly, Roy’s is just there for show (like a boy’s initial grandiose gestures), having been wiped out of business after a post-war boom among towns along Route 66 and before I-40 opened.
Prior to sitting at her perfectly-placed piano in front of the sign, however, we see a fake ad plastered on one of the pillars next to the gas pump. It’s for “Golden Years” (a nod to “brutal”) featuring Rodrigo dressed in a MARINA meets Aqua-inspired metallic ensemble. She then gets out of the car in her best imitation of a “punk rock” take on Britney’s schoolgirl look (so, in effect, “doing the Avril Lavigne”). It’s in this instant that we fathom how much effort actually goes into being “effortless,” with everything about Rodrigo—even her heartache—bearing an air of the manufactured. And yet, they say you can’t fool the public into buying what you’re selling unless at least some aspect of it is authentic. But this belief was formed long before the presence algorithms and other assorted AI offshoots. So maybe that platitude simply doesn’t carry weight any longer (or it carries about as much weight as the twiggish Rodrigo herself).
And yes, despite Rodrigo’s ardent claims of youth being an unbearable burden, she’s still striving to make it look aspirational. Thus, perhaps what’s most surprising about the documentary is how much it makes the viewer want to take a road trip (so no, not a PSA for avoiding frivolous fossil fuel emissions, which has never been the teen girl way). In that aesthetic sense, complete with occasional “vintage flourishes” on the cinematography front, it’s easy to see the Lana Del Rey influence (herself frequently accused of being manufactured) on more than just Rodrigo’s “sad girl” lyrics.
Discussing the creation of “brutal,” Rodrigo ends up in the Mojave Desert among a graveyard of planes (the Mojave Air and Space Port, in case you wanted to know). She then gets Blu DeTiger and Towa Bird to join in on a particularly “punk” version of the song that might never have existed had Rodrigo not been insistent upon another “upbeat” track for Sour. Within this unique setting, the echo and reverb of the single is quite affecting inside the carcass of a plane. And yet, the overly-tailored “dystopian” background is another crack in Rodrigo’s veneer of “authenticity,” with all of the “rough edges” being too manicured.
Maybe that’s why she looks more at home on a picturesque beach in Malibu (familiar territory from the “deja vu” video), which is where Driving Home 2 U ends, concluding with “hope ur ok” (just as the album does). It is with the performance of this song that Rodrigo can admit there’s at least something hopeful about a relationship ending and a new chapter starting in one’s life. Of course, that’s very easy to say at eighteen years old (Rodrigo’s age at the time of filming).
Watching her prance around barefoot in the sand, it becomes safe to say that Rodrigo’s inclusion of her recording sessions with Nigro are among the most honest moments of the documentary. In one particular scene, she asks, “Can I have my voice louder?” Incredulously, he replies, “Your voice louder?” She confirms, “Yeah, I’m a narcissist.” A somewhat dangerous thing for a girl to say right now, chiefly when highlighting themes of being wronged by a boy. What with every male looking to Amber Heard as a prime example to be upheld for why women are “crazy” and their perspectives “irrational.” But even for as “curated” as Rodrigo’s pain is in Driving Home 2 U, we know that it was genuine somewhere along the line before she became “ultra-famous.”
