This Pop Classic and Heartbreak Anthem Is Named Spotify's 'Greatest Pop Song of the Streaming Era'
Spotify released a ranking of the 100 Greatest Pop Songs of the Streaming Era, and the No. 1 track might surprise you.
Beating out other dominant streaming forces likeTaylor Swift, Billie Eilish,The Weeknd and more, Spotify's top pop song of the streaming era was revealed as Olivia Rodrigo's 2021 breakout hit "driver's license."
The song has over 2.7 billion streams on Spotify, but interestingly, it didn't make the Top 20 on the platform's recently-released list of the Most-Streamed Songs of All Time (ranked exclusively by streaming numbers).
"Driver's license" was instead selected as the Greatest Pop Song of the Streaming Era based on a different set of qualifications. According to the streamer, the songs were selected by Spotify editors based on "qualitative criteria including cultural impact, musicality, artist storytelling" and more. The website notes that a "high stream count was not required to make the list," though Rodrigo's hit was clearly still a massive streaming successes. ("Driver's license" even broke Spotify's record for the most streams in a single day for a non-holiday song at the time of its release.)
According to Spotify's new ranking of "pop classics," Rodrigo's emotional ballad earned the top spot over its "timeless themes-heartbreak, melodrama, and coming of age-anchored by the parallel milestones of getting your driver's license and losing your first love."
"It nods to late-2010s whisper-pop while layering in unexpected lyrical specificity, with lines like 'guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me' becoming instant classics," the website states.
Co-written by Rodrigo and Daniel Nigro, "driver's license" was released it as the lead single off her debut album, SOUR, and spent a total of 8 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100. It also earned Rodrigo a Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2022 ceremony, plus nominations for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year.
Copyright 2026 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This story was originally published April 28, 2026 at 5:38 AM.