Latest Release
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- 31 MAR 2023
- 41 Songs
- Elephant · 2003
- Seven Nation Army (The Glitch Mob Remix) - Single · 2003
- White Blood Cells · 2001
- Elephant · 2003
- White Blood Cells · 2001
- White Blood Cells · 2001
- Icky Thump · 2007
- Get Behind Me Satan · 2005
- The White Stripes · 1999
- Elephant (Deluxe) · 2023
Essential Albums
- Even someone who’s never heard of The White Stripes would recognise the opening notes from “Seven Nation Army”, the lead-off track from the band’s sprawling and audacious fourth album, Elephant. Featuring Jack White’s pulsing riff and Meg White’s unflinching beat, the appropriately titled “Seven Nation Army” became a world-conquering hit, a song that’s served as a score for every sort of athletic event since Elephant’s release in 2003—and the tune that solidified The White Stripes’ status as one of the mightiest rock bands in the world. For most of the song’s nearly four-minute runtime, that low-end lick curls like a snake ready to strike, providing the platform for Jack to vent about all of the gossip that the duo’s nascent fame had rendered. “I’m going to Wichita/Far from this opera forevermore,” he sings, coming down from one of rock music’s most splenetic solos. “I’m gonna work the straw/Make the sweat drip out of every pore.” What follows for the next 50 minutes is arguably the premier expression of The White Stripes’ time as a band, thanks to Elephant’s blend of pile-driving rock songs and quixotic pieces, all of which reimagine just what Meg and Jack White could do. “Black Math” is a savage punk burner, dreamt up as a retort to a horrible high-school math teacher. “Hypnotize”, meanwhile, is a come-hither paroxysm, Meg’s drums pushing Jack toward his next paramour as if she’s anxious to offload her ex. And even while being knighted as rock’s next great saviour, Jack found vim for a tirade of the ostracised on “The Hardest Button to Button”. If you came to Elephant looking for the then-fabled Detroit noise-makers who pounded their instruments, the album did not disappoint. But the true pay-off of Elephant, the bulk of which was recorded without computers at London’s Toe Rag Studios, is what the Whites were willing to try—and how often they succeeded. Backed by a Hammond organ’s bass, there is Meg’s fairy-tale-like solo vocal turn during “In the Cold, Cold Night”, which is soon followed by the desperate blues of Jack’s “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket”. The duo conjures Queen on “There’s No Home For You Here”, and combines John Lee Hooker and pure noise-rock on the innuendo-driven “Ball and Biscuit”—the longest song the pair ever put to tape. When Elephant ends with “It’s True That We Love One Another”, a campy sing-along featuring the Stripes’ hero and spiritual forebear Holly Golightly, the future seems wide open for The White Stripes—and with it, the ballyhooed next act of rock ’n’ roll.
- For listeners who harbour an elemental faith in rock ’n’ roll, 2001’s White Blood Cells might be a perfect album. The songs have the universal quality of classic rock (“Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”, “Offend in Every Way”), but its delivery—Meg White’s primitive drumming, Jack White’s bare-bones arrangements—feels rooted in punk (“Hotel Yorba”). They democratise the process by making it sound easy (“Little Room”), but they also lay bare how deceptive “easy” can be (“Fell in Love With a Girl”). And as unpretentious as the sound is, there’s something mysterious about it, too: a tiny machine whose movements seem less obvious the more you watch it work (“The Union Forever”). Jack White remembers hearing “Fell in Love With a Girl” on the radio next to the heavily produced hard rock of bands like Staind and Incubus, and wondering what The White Stripes were doing there. Of course White, who is as opinionated in interviews as he is enigmatic on record, knows: They were cutting through the noise and advancing the maxim that less might actually be more. Listeners who dismiss them as retro miss the broader point: With White Blood Cells, The White Stripes organise the sprawling, bluesy sounds of ’70s rock into something clear, minimal and modern—less a personal expression than than a simple, reliable chair. So it’s no coincidence that Jack White used to work as an upholsterer: They play like a band that honours craft. And if they spare you their rare fabrics and excess embellishment, it’s because they know that a happy customer is a good customer, and, like any honest business, they want to pass the savings on to you. White Blood Cells doesn’t go back to the basics so much as remind you that the basics are always there.
Artist Playlists
- This colourful couple spearheaded a blues-rock revival.
- 2007
Compilations
More To Hear
- Current and classics as 'Icky Thump' turns 15.
- Matt Wilkinson celebrates The White Stripes’ iconic album as it turns 20.
- Music courtesy of legends The White Stripes and Phoebe Bridgers.
- Diving into the catalogues of two musical greats.
- Playing music from the Detroit and Chicago legends.
- Playing music from the Detroit and Chicago legends.
- Playing music from the Detroit and Chicago legends.
About The White Stripes
In the wake of the ‘90s alternative boom, mainstream rock music had become largely disconnected from its roots in the blues—that is, until The White Stripes hooked it up to some rusty jumper cables and jolted it back to life. Emerging from the Detroit garage-rock trenches in 1997, the duo of Jack and Meg White embraced a vision of the blues that was equal parts John Lee Hooker and Jon Spencer, projecting a raw primitivism through their minimalist guitar/drums formation, yet also displaying a healthy appreciation for artifice by constructing their own media-trolling mythology. A married couple at the time, they instead presented themselves as a brother/sister act, wrapping themselves in a childlike white/red colour scheme that reflected the perpetual battle between innocence and fury playing out in their music. While the Stripes were initially right at home among the garage-punk miscreants on the Sympathy for the Record Industry label, their latent appreciation of classic pop songcraft—as evinced by their aching cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” on a 2000 B-side—proved to be their ticket out of the underground. Alongside The Strokes’ Is This It, 2001’s White Blood Cells became a bellwether for the 21st-century garage-rock renaissance thanks to equally thrashy and catchy nuggets like “Fell in Love With a Girl”. But with 2003’s double-album behemoth Elephant (and its eternal sports-arena stomper, “Seven Nation Army”), the Stripes transcended the garage realm entirely and entered the echelon of rock’s most omnipotent bands. They continued to expand the sonic possibilities of a two-piece group up until 2007, at which point Meg’s intensifying battles with anxiety forced them off the road, before they officially disbanded in 2011. But as a prolific solo artist and the impresario behind the Third Man Records empire, Jack has continued the Stripes’ mission of upholding old-school values in a modern world.
- ORIGIN
- Detroit, MI, United States
- FORMED
- 14 July 1997
- GENRE
- Alternative