Olivia Rodrigo has become the youngest solo artist to top both the UK singles and album chart at the same time.

The 18-year-old’s debut album Sour enjoyed the biggest opening week of 2021, setting a streaming record.

It attracted the highest number of streams for a debut album in its opening week, overtaking previous record holder Lewis Capaldi.

Meanwhile, her single Good 4 U is the year’s biggest number one, notching up 117,000 chart sales across seven days.

That figure includes 13.5 million streams, according to The Official Charts Company, who called the US singer “the year’s biggest breakthrough artist”.

Rodrigo’s debut single Drivers License topped the UK charts in January.

That song broke Spotify’s record for the most streams in one day, peaking at 17 million streams on 12 January.

Sour’s 51,000 sales – including streams, sales and downloads – make it the biggest opening week for a debut album in two years, since Capaldi’s Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent in May 2019.

Rodrigo’s album achieved 45.7 million streams of individual tracks over the past seven days (30,945 streaming-equivalent sales), the Official Charts Company said.

She is also the first artist for six years to top both charts on the release of their debut album. The last was Sam Smith in 2015 with the album In The Lonely Hour and single Lay Me Down.

Olivia Rodrigo has been singing as long she can remember. Growing up in Temecula, California, she would belt out the choruses to No Doubt’s Bathwater and the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army.

She started vocal lessons in kindergarten and by the age of eight was a talent-show regular. Her ability to inhabit a song was evident even then. “I was so dramatic,” she laughs. “There’s videos on YouTube of me singing, and I’m so into it. I act everything out and I’m so performative. People always told my mom, ‘You should put her in acting lessons.'”

Rodrigo went on to star in two Disney series, Bizaardvark and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, where she plays a student involved in a school production of the classic 2006 musical.

When the show’s creators discovered she was a budding musician, they encouraged her to write for the series. One of her songs, a power ballad called All I Want, racked up millions of streams and became a minor chart hit.

But although she arrived in a Disney vehicle, it was her own Drivers License – a devastating break-up ballad – that marked the arrival of pop’s brightest new star. After two increasingly impressive singles, and now a number one album, she’s on the road to even bigger things.
Rodrigo also has two other singles in this week’s top 10, with Déjà Vu at number four and Traitor at eight.

The highest new entry on the singles chart is Butter by BTS, which at number three, while last week’s chart topper Tion Wayne & Russ Millions is at two with Body.

In the albums chart, Sour is followed by three new entries.

Gary Numan’s Intruder is at two, Twenty One Pilots are at three with Scaled and Icy and Pink is number four with All I know So Far.

Rag ‘n’ Bone Man is at number five with Life By Misadventure, which was down two places.

Super Furry Animals’ frontman Gruff Rhys is at number 10 with his seventh album Seeking New Gods, which is his first UK Top 10 album.