More about: Olivia Rodrigo

“My life is just so weird! I moved out of my house, I’m not living with my parents, my album is done, I’m almost done with high school. It’s so weird. It’s all happening at once!” muses Olivia Rodrigo in the first seconds of her documentary, driving home 2 u. Captured in the midst of putting the finishing touches on her world-shaking debut album, SOUR, it epitomises the craziness of the last year for the artist. Her trajectory from the ukulele wielding Nini on Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series to undisputable popstar was nauseatingly sudden, and as Rodrigo puts it, certifiably weird. 

It's an unusual, but refreshing path for a Disney kid—previously, that foray into new territory meant a clean-cut kid image and unwavering loyalty to the Disney brand. As Rodrigo packs her bags and retraces an all too familiar road trip from Salt Lake to Los Angeles in her new film, she conjures an angst and vulnerability that sheds the skin of that uber-pop, squeaky clean expectation. On SOUR, she specialised in heart-shattering ballads and incendiary visuals. For once, a Disney Channel star was stepping onto their own feet. 

It's what makes driving home 2 u’s placement on Disney+ so interesting and layered. Whilst in a sense it’s a homecoming for someone who landed their first Disney Channel role at just twelve, it also feels distinctly like a distancing. The platform might share her journey with the world, but it makes it strikingly clear that it is Rodrigo who sits behind the wheel. 

Grainy vignettes, neon glows and sheens of nostalgia form the landscape for driving home 2 u. As Rodrigo and her extensive Dr Marten collection recount the life and death of a devastating relationship, she finds herself in empty parking lots, petrol stations, floral-curtained motel rooms. It’s a journey that often centres Rodrigo on her own—as though after the chaos of a year scrutinised by millions of eyes, there’s a desperate need to sort through things solo. Directed by Stacey Lee, the camera often lingers on shots of Rodrigo lost in thought that accompany the baring of the soul that SOUR often offers.

Joined by friend and fellow musician Jacob Collier, Rodrigo ponders what it might mean to build a career from shattering heartbreak and loss, something she worries will expire and leave her aimless. It’s symptomatic of the success of her debut single, ‘drivers license’: a large part of its record-smashing success undoubtedly stemmed from its sheer candid pain. Left reeling over a breakup and seeing remnants of that relationship on every street corner, it’s a kind of raw hurt that resonated with her newfound legions of fans. She captures every stomach-dropping moment of that first heartache with such specificity that you’re feeling every twist of the knife with her. 

That authenticity and intense transparency is paramount to Rodrigo’s sound and in turn, her success. On driving home 2 u, it is amplified. We see her joined by producer and collaborator Dan Nigro in the studio, grappling with these tracks in different forms, her perfectionist streak in full view as she undergoes take after weary take. As they ruminate on the still keenly-felt emotions that led Rodrigo to this track, there’s a sense that these tracks could’ve taken a myriad of different forms. As insightful as the look into their creative process is, it’s the exploration of these tracks that is the real charm at the heart of driving home 2 u. 

‘jealousy, jealousy,’ an anxiety-born outpouring of frustration at social media’s toxicity, is transformed into a pop-punk, guitar-heavy performance. The distress at the track’s core is far better served by the high-energy expulsion of that exasperation. Elsewhere, the stripped-back version of one of the album’s highlights, ‘favorite crime' sees Rodrigo at an outdoor venue in Arcosanti, Arizona. Her voice bounces off the domed walls, each voice crack and uncontainable feeling floating across the blue skies. 

By far the standout reimagining of the documentary is the originally Paramore-esque, bitingly ferocious ‘good 4 u’. The track’s scathing quality remains, but little else. She trades in her usual five-piece troop for an impressive strings section: they imbue ‘good 4 u’ with a taunting cinematic quality that widens its scope and is regenerative. After a year of hearing the track in every shop and every radio station, driving home 2 u offers it a new lease of life.

It perhaps seems premature for an artist so early in her career to have a documentary film. Yet, the success of SOUR was entangled with rumours, TikTok theories and battling headlines. On driving home 2 u, Rodrigo redefines the album through her own understanding and experience recording it. In airport hangers, diners and forests, these songs are reborn and reclaimed.

As she reminds us at the beginning of the documentary, SOUR came to life in a storm of change for Rodrigo. The now 19-year-old ends driving home 2 u with a poignant rendition of the album’s closer, ‘hope ur ok’, before joining her band and leaping into the Malibu waters. It’s a freeing finale—one that seems to wash away the stresses and craze that led to this moment.

It’s been a year no one could have predicted, one that her documentary proves has prompted a significant amount of growth for the artist both musically and emotionally. In its return to the depths of her sadness and dejection, driving home 2 u retrieves a light and hope. Each muted-toned frame and glance in the butterfly adorned rear-view sees her drive forward one more inch. To what, who knows, but with driving home 2 u, the engine is finally shut off on this chapter of Olivia Rodrigo’s life.

driving home 2 u is streaming now on Disney+.

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More about: Olivia Rodrigo