Five years ago today, Olivia Rodrigo got her "Drivers License" last week. That song became a #1 hit and made Rodrigo an instant star, so much so that she spent last festival season sharing stages with the likes of Weezer, Robert Smith, and David Byrne, covering those legends' respective hits. Now Byrne is returning the favor with a studio cover of "Drivers License."
I love David Byrne's music. I love Olivia Rodrigo's music. I, unfortunately, do not love this cover. Byrne can often pull off being a little bit corny, but "Drivers License" is not meant to be a corny song, and trying to put a new wave spin on it feels painfully forced. I'm also not crazy about him changing the lines "You're probably with that blonde girl who always made me doubt/ She's so much older than me, she's everything I'm insecure about" to be about a younger blonde guy instead. I do kind of like when the percussion picks up during the bridge, though. The best part of this cover, however, is the possibility that Byrne, a famed bike-as-transport advocate, actually did get just his driver's license last week.
Byrne's take on "Drivers License" is "just the first in a series of covers tied to the fifth anniversary of Sour," Rodrigo's debut album. (Talking Heads, incidentally, did a similar project back in 2024.) "We’re starting off insanely strong with an incredible reworking of ‘drivers license’ from one of my all-time heroes, David Byrne," Rodrigo wrote on Instagram. David is nothing short of a legend and I actually cried when I heard his version of this song." In his own post, Byrne wrote: "My new friend Olivia Rodrigo invited me to interpret her 1st single to be paired with a release of our live cover of 'Burning Down The House.' I discovered that her song resonates (I changed a few words!) and is universal — we all have those feelings and have had that experience."
We don't know anything else about the rest of those Sour covers just yet, but for now, you can peruse Rodrigo's new Sour-themed capsule merch collection, which includes a 7-inch of Byrne's "Drivers License" b/w a live version of Byrne and Rodrigo doing "Burning Down The House" together at Governors Ball last summer. I like that cover much better.
