Having previously revealed the good advice that Jack White gave her at the start of her career, Olivia Rodrigo has paid him back with a performance of a White Stripes song to mark the band’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Rodrigo was joined by fellow fan Feist as they sang and strummed 2002 single We’re Going To Be Friends. This followed an induction speech from Iggy Pop, who led the audience in a singalong of the legendary guitar riff from Seven Nation Army. In the following tribute video, Rodrigo described this as “the most iconic song of all time.”
Accepting the band’s induction, Jack White passed on retired drummer Meg White’s apologies for her non-attendance, but revealed that she was grateful for the honour and actually checked (and edited) his speech.
After giving his thanks to all and sundry, White offered his advice to young artists: “Get your hands dirty and drop the screens and get out in your garage or your little room and get obsessed. We all wanna share in what you might create.”
After which, we got Olivia Rodrigo and Feist’s delicate acoustic rendition, before things took a turn for the heavier courtesy of Twenty One Pilots, who gave us the obligatory performance of Seven Nation Army.
Writing on Instagram later, Rodrigo said: “I had a White Stripes fan account when I was 13 [less than a decade ago, terrifyingly] and last night I got to help induct them into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!!!!! What a surreal honour to sing one of their beautiful songs with the wildly talented Feist and celebrate music that means so much to me. Thank u Jack and Meg for being the best band ever!!!!!!!”
Oh, and that advice that Jack White gave Rodrigo? The younger star spoke about it in 2023, as she was preparing to drop her second album, Guts.
“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 The New York Times. As she admitted, though, this is easier said than done: “I mean, writing songs that you would like to hear on the radio is in fact very hard.”
