On September 8, Olivia Rodrigo will drop Guts, her highly anticipated followup to her world-beating 2021 Sour debut, and the rollout is going strong. “Vampire” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July, and “Bad Idea Right?” debuted at No. 1 on this week’s Hot 100 chart, on which “Vampire” sits at No. 6.
It seems like a foregone conclusion that Rodrigo’s singles are hits, but the 20-year-old phenom wasn’t so sure how her post-Sour material would be received.
Caryn Ganz profiled Rodrigo for The New York Times, published this morning (August 24). “Crafting the follow-up to a smash debut is music’s most daunting crucible, and Rodrigo felt the pressure to make a diamond. Ultimately, she turned to advice she’d received from an idol, Jack White,” Ganz wrote.
“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,'” Rodrigo told Ganz. “I mean, writing songs that you would like to hear on the radio is in fact very hard.”
Elsewhere in the profile, Ganz relayed that Rodrigo “mocked herself for crying when she met Jack White” and explained why it’s more accurate to view Rodrigo as a rockstar than a pop star. Read the full profile here.
Guts is out 9/8 via Geffen. Find more information here.
