Olivia Rodrigo Reveals Advice She Received While Recording ‘Guts’

While recently speaking with the New York Times, Olivia Rodrigo revealed two unlikely figures who gave her advice, which she used while recording her second studio album, Guts. As it turns out, Jack White and St. Vincent helped Rodrigo quite a bit with their encouraging words. Guts will be released on September 8.

Rodrigo revealed that White sent her a heartfelt letter. “Your only job is to write music that you would want to hear on the radio,” White wrote in the letter, according to Rodrigo.

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“He wrote me this letter the first time I met him…” Rodrigo told the publication. “I mean, writing songs that you would like to hear on the radio is in fact very hard.”

St. Vincent, whose real name is Annie Clark, added her kind words regarding Rodrigo.  “I’ve never met anyone so young and so effortlessly self-possessed. [Rodrigo] knows who she is and what she wants — and doesn’t seem to be in any way afraid of voicing that,” St. Vincent said. “And just a really lovely girl too,” she added. “I’ve never heard her say a bad word about anyone.”

“She’s a revelation… It’s a fascinating thing to watch these young women, and especially Olivia, because she seems to be so advanced as a songwriter, expressing themselves in these really complicated ways,” Bikini Kill lead singer Kathleen Hanna told the Times.

During the same interview, Rodrigo described her forthcoming album as being “about reckoning with those feelings and coming out of that disillusionment and realizing the core of who I am and what I want to be doing and who I want to be spending my time with.” She also discussed life after releasing her debut album, Sour.

“I had such a desire to live and experience things and make mistakes and grow after Sour came out, I kind of felt this pressure to be this girl that I thought everyone expected me to be,” Rodrigo said. “And I think because of that pressure, maybe I did things that maybe I shouldn’t have — dated people that I shouldn’t have… I’m very tame.”

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