Olivia Rodrigo was nervous about being pigeon-holed as a Disney star when she signed up to appear in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.
The teenage singer has enjoyed massive worldwide success with her tune Drivers License, but before she launched a singing career, Olivia found fame starring as Nini Salazar-Roberts on the Disney+ series, based on the High School Musical movies. And in an interview with NME, the 18-year-old explained that she worried starting her career with Disney would lead to her being automatically put into a certain category with her music.
"That’s not to knock Disney Channel artists," she insisted. "Some of my favourite artists came from Disney Channel… But yeah, I always wanted to do something different. I never wanted to be a pop girl; that was never my prerogative. I've always wanted to write my own songs. It was super-important to me that I told my own stories in my unique voice.”
While Olivia has always tried to use her own experiences to inspire her songwriting, she added that when it came to her upbringing, she feared that it would make it harder for people to relate to her and her music.
"I remember worrying that I wasn’t going to write songs that were relatable because of how weird growing up on a set was," she grinned. "Like, what was I going to write about? 'Ah, gotta do this table read!'"
