Olivia Rodrigo Says All That Sabrina Carpenter-Joshua Bassett Drama Was 'Really Hard'

“Sometimes it wasn’t always the kindest or the most respectful."

Olivia Rodrigo Says All That Sabrina Carpenter-Joshua Bassett Drama Was 'Really Hard'

Still trying to figure out why “Drivers License” is all over your feed? Think about it this way: Remember when Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan were feuding over Aaron Carter? That’s kind of what’s going down between Olivia Rodrigo, Joshua Bassett, and Sabrina Carpenter. 

Here’s everything you need to know about the song “Drivers License” and the drama behind the official breakup hit of 2021. 

In case those names mentioned above mean nothing to you, Olivia Rodrigo, 17, stars in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series on Disney+ alongside Joshua Bassett, 20. And just like the original High School Musical cast, the onscreen pair was rumored to be dating in real life. They even wrote music together that was used in the show. 

However, more recently Bassett has been “spotted” with Sabrina Carpenter, 21, who first rose to fame on Disney Channel’s Girl Meets World (man, everything is a reboot these days).

Per People, this led fans to believe that Bassett had split with Rodrigo for Carpenter. The timing isn’t super clear here, since people have basically pieced it together and made inferences from what’s posted on Instagram, and no one involved has commented on it. (So let that tell you to take this all with a grain of salt.) Bassett and Carpenter went as Sharkboy and Lavagirl for Halloween, which could be a couple costume in the romantic sense or the friendship sense, but they were definitely “together” in some way.

In the lyrics of the song, Rodrigo sings about getting her license “just like we always talked about,” which fans think is a reference to Bassett, as a resurfaced video indicates he helped her learn to drive. A few lines later Rodrigo references a “blond girl” who is “older” and made her feel insecure, possibly Carpenter. Then again, back in July, Rodrigo posted a video of herself working on the song in which the line references a “brunette.” So the change to “blond” could be totally benign. 

Rodrigo has been a fan of Swift’s for years, and TayTay recently congratulated her on her success after “Drivers License" started breaking serious records and topping the charts. Swift was known to write diaristic songs when she was Rodrigo’s age and even revisited the teenage love triangle theme (albeit a fictional one) on her Folklore album. 

Oh, anything and everything. It’s become a huge trend on TikTok to explore the various points of view presented in the song, as well as to theorize about the real-life drama that could have inspired it. The good news is that Bassett praised the song on Instagram, and everyone seemed to be on mostly good terms, even if feelings were hurt at some point.

Bassett released the track “Lie, Lie, Lie” on January 14, following the popularity of “Drivers License.” Fans had particular feelings about him using a car in the artwork for the track, which many felt was a direct reference to Rodrigo’s record-breaking song.

“I know what you say about me. I hope that it makes you happy,” he sings in the chorus. “You can’t seem to get me off your mind. Oh, I know you’re lying through your teeth. You told them the lies that you told me. I’ve had enough of it this time.”

“I wrote ‘Lie, Lie, Lie’ after I found out a friend had been lying about me behind my back for a long time,” the actor wrote via his Instagram Stories, per Us Weekly. “It always sucks to hear that someone you thought you could trust would throw you under the bus when it benefits them.”

Not really. In an interview with Billboard that was published on January 19, she said the backstory of the song doesn’t really matter. “I totally understand people’s curiosity with the specifics of who the song’s about and what it’s about, but to me, that’s really the least important part of the song,” she says. “It’s resonating with people because of how emotional it is, and I think everything else is not important.”

Everything really heated up when Carpenter released her new song, “Skin,” on January 22. The lyrics include a lot of references to Rodrigo’s original song that simply can’t be a coincidence. “Maybe we could have been friends if I met you in another life. Maybe then we could pretend there’s no gravity in the words we write,” Carpenter sings in the opener. “Maybe you didn’t mean it. Maybe blond was the only rhyme.” 

Then, she makes more references with lyrics like “don’t drive yourself insane” and “I’m not asking you to let it go, but you been tellin’ your side so I’ll be telling mine.” Interestingly, some fans felt Carpenter’s response was a little harsh.

https://twitter.com/nyla_dumb/status/1352583497026834432

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“Been stuck in my head since I heard it!!!” Bassett wrote on his Instagram Stories January 22, per Billboard, alongside the “Skin” cover art. “Congratulations @sabrinacarpenter on ‘Skin,’ the new label, & all that’s to come!!!”

“Thank you to everyone who has listened to skin  especially those who have opened their minds to lyrically what i was trying to get across,” she wrote on Instagram January 25. “I wasn’t bothered by a few lines in a (magnificent) song and wrote a diss track about it. I was at a tipping point in my life for countless reasons. so i was inspired to do what i usually do to cope, write something that i wish i could have told myself in the past. people can only get to you if you give them the power to. and a lot of people were trying to get to me. the song isn’t calling out one single person. some lines address a specific situation, while other lines address plenty of other experiences I’ve had this past year.”

This one’s called “Only a Matter of Time,” and the lyrics—well, I’ll just let them speak for themselves: 

“Time to tell the world that you've been lyin’ on my name, / Doin’ what you want and think you’re gonna get away. / I’m sure that you're hurting inside, / But why would you makе your pain mine? /  You’re makin’ me pay for your crimes. / You can’t tear me down and act like I will just forget.”

Per BuzzFeed, Bassett said he wrote the song in summer 2020, which means it couldn’t be about the Rodrigo-Carpenter situation, right? 

Well, not necessarily. BuzzFeed notes the alleged Rodrigo-Bassett breakup was happening around that time. Remember the “Dump him” T-shirt? Yeah, Rodrigo posted that photo right around the time Bassett and Carpenter were spotted out and about. Again, this is all pure speculation!

Hmmm, interesting.

Rodrigo performed the song on television for the first time on the February 4 episode of The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. 

There’s seriously no escaping this song—especially if you’re Joshua Bassett. On February 20, Saturday Night Live posted a hilarious sketch featuring the men of SNL (plus host Regé-Jean Page) belting out the hit song and explaining the drama. 

Surprisingly, Bassett’s response on TikTok was equally funny. 

While Carpenter hasn’t posted anything about the SNL moment, Rodrigo’s response was a lot less conflicted:

https://twitter.com/Olivia_Rodrigo/status/1363355457675403266

While Carpenter recently discussed a new song collab she worked on with Bassett, the HSMTMTS actor just revealed that he has cut “We Both Know” from his upcoming EP. 

[I didn’t want my EP to be overshadowed by some other narrative that people were trying to make,” Bassett told Billboard in an interview published on February 25. “I really want the focus to be on the art instead of some of the talk and the chatter. You shouldn’t live to please everybody, but at the same time, there are ways to be sensitive to situations where maybe [‘We Both Know’] has a better chance at a different time.”

In May 2021, Rodrigo told NME that all the online speculation and intense scrutiny was “really hard."

“Sometimes it wasn’t always the kindest or the most respectful,” she said. "But I understand why people are curious and I’ve been curious about who my favorite songwriters wrote their songs about, so I completely understand.”

This post will be updated as more drama unfolds.

This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Elizabeth Logan