In Detroit back in the late ’90s, The White Stripes were not immediately popular a local scenester once described them as “the kid band that nobody liked.” That was partly due to White’s voice, which was even more shrill and Robert Plant-esque (and therefore un-punk) in the early days. Their debut single, and a summation of their sound and aesthetic. How exactly did this band make blues rock great again? I tried to figure that out by revisiting my 30 favorite White Stripes songs. Hopefully the new greatest hits record will be an excuse to go back and listen to The White Stripes’ music, which I’m happy to report holds up very well. (When White calls himself “the seventh son” in “Ball And Biscuit,” he’s referencing a classic blues trope and the fact that he is literally the seventh born son in his family.) Ultimately, it was hard to tell sometimes where the mythos ended. Their formula of commingling a plainly constructed mythos - a brother-sister band dressed like peppermint candies - with utterly simple and gut-level blues-based rock proved to be remarkably resilient, both commercially and artistically, over the course of six albums. In their time, The White Stripes were as unlikely a world-conquering band as Nirvana was in the early ’90s. Jack White has since moved on to a successful solo career, though his tendency to come off as a reactionary crank in interviews has taken some of the shine off of his former band’s legacy. But it’s also warranted and even necessary revisionism for one of the great (and misunderstood) bands of their era.Īlmost a decade after they broke up, The White Stripes are even more out-of-step with the pop mainstream in 2020 then they were during the era of nu-metal and teen pop. ![]() For White, it’s another classic anachronistic move: In the age of streaming platforms, greatest hits compilations have become all but extinct. Next month, Jack White’s Third Man Records will release a new greatest hits album by The White Stripes.
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