You can hear that on ‘Good 4 U’ and its Green Day-indebted chorus. “We wanted to take an early 2000s pop-punk song and sort of twist it and find a way to make it 2021,” Rodrigo reveals of the slick tune. “I hope people are surprised. I love pop-punk music; I love grunge music; I love country music and folk music. I think, honestly, you can see little influences of all of those genres in my album. And I didn’t want to make an entire record that sounded like ‘Drivers License’. There’s no fun in that for me – and probably not for listeners, either.”

There’s one constant in Rodrigo’s music: her astonishingly open songwriting. She’s a thoroughly Gen-Z creator, wearing her emotions plainly and pouring her own experiences into her songs. That’s in keeping with her peers such as Madison Beer and Girl In Red, the latter of whom recently told NME: “Gen-Z crave and expect more honesty, intimacy and almost a rawness.”

Rodrigo adds: “I’ve always been such an oversharer. I’ll tell my Uber driver all of my deepest traumas and insecurities, and so I just think songwriting for me is an extension of that aspect of my personality. I’ve never really been so terrified of people learning about the intimate parts of myself; I think that’s what makes songwriting so special.”

This honesty goes hand-in-hand with a shift in the relationship between fans and artists. In the past, an artist would have built up intimacy with fans through initial live shows. It was once a badge of honour to say you were at an act’s early gig, which music lovers who discovered ‘Drivers License’ in a pandemic won’t exactly be able to do. But Rodrigo’s not worried.

“I feel like social media is taking that role,” she says, explaining that the shift was already underway. “I used to brag that I followed Billie Eilish when she had 200,000 followers on Instagram, and that’s sort of the new ‘I was there at their first show’.” She’s a big fan of Eilish and says that she was “so moved” by the star’s recent British Vogue cover: “She’s so intelligent and I think it’s so awesome that girls can look up to somebody like her, who’s so brave and intelligent.”

Rodrigo’s parents are both “music heads” and encouraged their daughter’s artistic endeavours. Rodrigo started to audition for television and film acting roles at seven years old, something she recognises as a brutal process: “I think auditions are really rough for anyone. I know people who’ve gone into their first audition and booked it, but that definitely was not my experience”. There were times that she almost sacked the whole thing off. At one point she made a pact with her mum: if she didn’t get a job by Christmas, they’d call it quits. She booked her first gig in November of that year.

In 2016 she joined the Disney Channel, first as a lead on comedy series Bizaardvark, and since 2019 she’s had a major role in mockumentary TV show High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, with the second season of the series airing later this year. Other artists who have similarly come up via Disney have tried, in their solo work, to distance themselves from that time in their lives. Miley Cyrus, for instance, overhauled her image with 2010’s risqué ‘Can’t Be Tamed’ and actor Bella Thorne has discussed no longer needing to have a “innocent Disney appeal” when she wrapped her work on the channel.

Now her music is taking off, was Rodrigo nervous about being pigeon-holed as a Disney channel artist?

“Yeah, totally,” she says. “That’s not to knock Disney Channel artists. 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.” She adds, diplomatically: “I always wanted to write my own songs.” While Rodrigo has written a handful of songs for High School Musical, she’s largely performing songs that she won’t have written herself. “It was super-important to me that I told my own stories in my unique voice.”

“I’ve looked up to Taylor Swift since I was five years old. She’s so business-savvy”

Growing up on television sets initially made Rodrigo anxious about her lyrical content: “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 adds, laughing: “Like, what was I going to write about? ‘Ah, gotta do this table read!’”

The success of her gargantuan breakout song has helped to tame these fears, though: “With ‘Drivers License’, there were a lot of people who were like, ‘Yo, I’ve never heard of this girl before but I really like this song’, which to me was the dream – to get a brand new introduction to people just as a songwriter. I consider myself a songwriter first and I’m really happy that people are starting to recognise me as such.” Elsewhere in our conversation, too, she insists that it’s important to her to be “taken seriously as a songwriter.”

That’s surely the effect ‘Sour’ will have. Follow-up single ‘Deja Vu’, released in April, is a witty eye-roll that sees her scoff at an ex who’s repurposing their romantic moments with a new partner: “So when you gonna tell her that we did that, too? / She thinks it’s special, but it’s all re-used,” she slams in the chorus. On album track ‘Enough For You’, Rodrigo lays out the power imbalance in a flawed relationship: “I wore make-up when we dated ’cause I thought you’d like me more.”

With this level of ownership as a writer, though, comes negatives. As ‘Drivers License’ picked up pace, there was huge intrigue as to who she’d written the song about, with sites speculating about a “love triangle drama” involving her High School Musical co-star Joshua Bᴀssett. “To be completely honest, it was really hard,” she says of the endless online speculation. “And, yeah, sometimes it wasn’t always the kindest or the most respectful. But I understand why people are curious and I’ve been curious about who my favourite songwriters wrote their songs about, so I completely understand.”

This level of commentary is almost exclusively reserved for female artists, with lyrics by women undergoing an extra level of scrutiny from the media and listeners – just look at Taylor Swift’s songs being dissected for details about her love life. “It would be a bald-faced lie if I say that I didn’t face any misogyny in the music industry – especially being a young girl,” Rodrigo tells NME. “It’s a weird place to be. But I feel like I’m surrounded by people who really respect me and treat me with kindness. I’m really lucky in that regard and I hope that my generation of artists can really forge a path for younger artists.”

She also insists she would let the scrutiny lead her to self-censorship: “I’m not going to sacrifice me being vulnerable and writing songs that I feel like are true to what I feel… I’m just always gonna write about what I feel the most intensely because that’s the best sort of songwriting.”

And, luckily, the 18-year-old is not going through the maelstrom alone – a host of pop superstars have reached out to Rodrigo to offer advice in recent months. Cardi B tweeted her support (“She’s super cool and I hope to meet her one day”), One Direction’s Niall Horan told her he “loved” ‘Drivers License’ and Rodrigo’s songwriting idol Taylor Swift sent her a handwritten note of encouragement.