There’s nothing Olivia Rodrigo loves more than celebrating her musical inspirations. The popstar brought that fervor to a guest appearance on the latest episode of Jeopardy!, where she announced the show’s special “Women in Music” category.
“I’ll have
clues about some of the amazing singers who have inspired me,” Rodrigo said in a clip before going on to highlight Beyoncé, Gwen Stefani, Alanis Morissette, St. Vincent, and Sarah McLachlan’s all-women music festival Lilith Fair.
Rodrigo said that she watched Beyoncé’s “great” performance of “If I Were a Boy” at the 2010 Grammys “over and over” for the Jeopardy! prompt. It’s not the first time she made that claim. In 2022, she told People, “I remember watching it like 25 times, being so enamored with her,” and added, “It’s so crazy that, maybe one day, a younger girl’s going to watch my performance many times and think that it’s cool. That’s the dream. That’s all I want.”
The notable No Doubt superfan clued Jeoprady! contestants by referring to Stefani as “a California girl like myself,” but her connection with the band is much stronger than that. In June, Rodrigo joined Stefani onstage for No Doubt’s residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas after holding up a poster that said: “I’m just a girl who wants the last hug at the last Sphere show.” In 2024, she performed “Bathwater” alongside No Doubt for their Coachella 2024 set.
As for her Morissette clue, Rodrigo made this one pretty obvious, calling the Canadian Songwriter Hall of Famer her “icon” and stating that “Jagged Little Pill changed [her] life.” It’s not the first time she has said this, either. In 2021, the year she broke out with “Driver’s License,” Rodrigo graced the cover of this magazine alongside Morissette for our Musicians on Musicians issue. “I remember having my mind blown when I was 13,” she told the star. “I just looked at music and songwriting in a completely different way.”
“I draw some of my greatest inspiration from women singer-songwriters of the Nineties,” Rodrigo said, hinting at the McLachlan-founded Lilith Fair music festival. The popstar has been so adamant and open about how much this festival inspired her, that she even created her own one modeled after it: Daisy Chain Fields festival. “The first person that I called when I decided that I wanted to do this festival was Sarah McLachlan,” Rodrigo told Diane Sawyer. “She’s a total trailblazer and an incredible artist and a friend,” she added.
For her final clue, Rodrigo used St. Vincent’s real name, Annie Clark, to try and stump contestants. (It worked). “I even play one of her signature guitars,” she said of working with the musician. For her Guts tour, Rodrigo rocked out on the Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent Goldie signature guitar, “She made a guitar that’s specifically designed for women because she plays her guitar really high up, and it’s cut so that you can have boobs and play guitar, which is so awesome,” Rodrigo told another one of her idols, Kathleen Hanna, on the Music Makes Us podcast.
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