Olivia Rodrigo and Barry Gibb have more in common than you might think: they’re both enjoying their very first U.K. solo No. 1s this week.
Rodrigo is just 17, she boasts Taylor Swift as a bestie and she’s now the owner of a U.K. chart record.
“Drivers License” (Interscope), the rising star’s debut single, blasts to No. 1 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart with 95,000 chart sales.
The first-week tally includes 10.9 million streams, eclipsing Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You” to claim the U.K.’s highest number of streams ever in a single day for a non-Christmas song, the Official Charts Company reports.
The song sprouted wings in the second half of the week. Little Mix’s previous leader “Sweet Melody” (RCA) had led in the first half. But as the seven-day span reached its climax, “Sweet Melody” finished well behind at No. 2, followed by Ed Sheeran’s “Afterglow” (Asylum).
Along the way, “Drivers License” clocked almost 2.407 million streams in 24 hours (on Tuesday, Jan. 12), beating the previous 24-hour record held by “Shape of You,” which snagged 2.274 million streams in one day back in 2017.
Meanwhile, Barry Gibb, the 74-year-old Bee Gees legend, is no stranger to life at the top of sales charts. This week, however, he bags his first solo No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart with Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers’ Songbook (Vol. 1) (EMI), a collection of the sibling trio’s works reinvented as country duets.
Greenfields completes the chart cycle with more than twice the chart sales of its closest competition, Passenger’s Songs For The Drunk and Broken Hearted (Cooking Vinyl), the Brighton solo artist’s sixth Top 10 title.
Gibb’s previous chart peak as a solo artist was a No. 2 for 2016’s In The Now.
