Olivia Rodrigo Reveals Advice Jack White Gave Her In A Letter

Olivia Rodrigo has already proclaimed that Jack White is her "hero of all heroes," and in a recent profile with The New York Times, the alt-rock-inspired pop star she named the former White Stripes frontman as a mentor while making her upcoming album GUTS.

Rodrigo revealed that White wrote her a letter after they first met last year, and dropped some wisdom on how to approach the follow up to her popular debut SOUR. “He wrote me this letter the first time I met him that said, ‘Your only job is to write music that you would want to hear on the radio,’” she explained. “I mean, writing songs that you would like to hear on the radio is in fact very hard.”

The 20-year-old also named Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna and St. Vincent's Annie Clark as mentors, and the admiration was mutual on both ends. “She’s a revelation,” Hanna said in the profile. “To be my age and cry at something that someone so young wrote — like listening to ‘Drivers License’ for the first time and sobbing in my car.”

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

GUTS comes out on September 8 and features singles "bad idea right?" and "vampire."