When we bid goodbye to 2020 and welcomed in 2021, none of us expected the upcoming year of pop culture to be dominated by a Disney star in a Disney love triangle.

But within days, the Olivia Rodrigo train had left the station - and it's showed no sign of slowing down ever since.

If you haven't heard the name Olivia Rodrigo yet, you've heard the voice.

Watch: The star signs when going through a breakup. Post continues below video.

She's been on the radio and in every Spotify playlist since the release of 'drivers license' on January 8, singing about how she misses her ex and drives past his house, just because. The song has been unescapable, so thankfully, it's really bloody good.

It's been a long time since a star has made such a splash in pop music, so quickly. Even Billie Eilish took years to release an album. Rodrigo's speedy success is reminiscent ofanotherteenager; then-16-year-old Lorde with 'Royals' in 2013.

With two just-as-good follow-up singles, and the release of her (already critically acclaimed) debut album,Sour,earlier in May, Rodrigo has cemented herself as a major player in less than six months.

Pre-'drivers license', 18-year-old Rodrigo was mostly known within Disney circles.

She starred in the Disney Channel seriesBizaardvarkfrom 2016 to 2019, before being cast as the lead, Nini, in Disney+'sHigh School Musical: The Musical: The Series.

Plenty have made the transition from Disney to mainstream popstar before Rodrigo, but she's doing a few things differently.

Firstly, it takes less than 40 seconds into her album before you hear an f-bomb. As much as she may have wanted to, 18-year-old Miley Cyrus could never. Rodrigo is signed with Interscope and Geffen Records, rather than Disney's subsidiary Hollywood Records, giving her more freedom in her image and sound.

She's also taken lessons from those who came before her. A long-time Taylor Swift fan, Rodrigo has full control of her master recordings.

She's still a teenager, and Gen Z as hell, but Rodrigo is the next big thing in music. She's here to stay, so we may as well learn what makes her so successful, huh?

A love triangle, behind-the-scenes drama and a debut album.

Besides being a truly good song, Rodrigo's first single was bolstered by interest in her personal life. Namely, a Disney-love triangle with her ex-boyfriend and co-star Joshua Bassett and his new girlfriend, Sabrina Carpenter.

The release of 'drivers license' saw the internet dissecting all the lyrics, trawling their socials for evidence and piecing together what happened with them behind-the-scenes.

This isn't to say the song wouldn't have been well-received without the drama. Taylor Swift praised the song in a rare social media post, and the kids over on TikTok embraced it wholeheartedly. It broke the record for the most single-day streams for a non-Christmas song on Spotify, and I doubt all of those listeners knew about a simmering Disney feud.

Soon after came songs from Bassett and Carpenter too.

Both their singles were seen as responses to Rodrigo, though all three have been coy, preferring to let their lyrics do the talking. That's only upped the intrigue.

Neither Rodrigo nor her team expected 'drivers license' to blow up how it did.

They'd originally planned to release an EP, but after its success, this evolved into a full-length album,Sour.

The title represents all the "sour" emotions young women "are often shamed for", like anger, jealousy and sadness, she explained to The Face.

In aBillboardinterview, Rodrigo said she tried to balance out the "sour" songs with love songs, in order to avoid being pigeonholed as "the heartbreak girl", but it didn't feel authentic based on where she was at this point in her life. So she just... didn't.

There are segues into how being a teenager is actually pretty shitty, with opener 'brutal' and 'jealousy, jealousy', and a LBTIQI+ acceptance narrative on 'hope ur ok', but there's no doubt about it;Souris a break-up album.

What's telling is how we've all approached that.

We're finally taking young women seriously.

The string that ties this all together is that Rodrigo is a young woman unapologetic about all her angsty, messy, and sometimes petty feelings.

For those around her age, it's relatab