the white stripes

or, make it dumb but make it LOUD

You’re sleepwalking out of childhood when a guitar on the TV makes a sound like you’ve never heard before. It reaches inside you, grabs your spine, and trembles in a way that makes you sit up straighter. It’s heavy and distorted and slightly wrong, the way it grinds against your bones, shivering through your teeth.

But also it’s irresistible. The song is so short that you need to play it again but this is the before you had access to a computer or the internet. It’s why you’re watching MTV to discover music instead of using limewire or kazaa like everyone you know.

Ever since my son watched Encanto, we became an Encanto household. I’ve heard the whole soundtrack a hundred times. Every time I got in the car with my son, he asked for Bruno, for Luisa, for the Madrigals. Even quiet moments at home became filled with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s music about a magical family.

I tried what I could to break my son from this spell, not because I don’t like Encanto, but because there are very few albums that I want to listen to all day every day for months at a time. I tried the Beatles, which sort of worked in fits and spurts. My son loves this version of Don’t Let Me Down, but it seemed to be the live performance aspect more than the music.

He liked the way Paul does his awkward dance, the way Ringo drummed, and so I thought I’d lean into that. I pulled up videos of drummers drumming and it really got his attention. Surprisingly, watching some maniacs blastbeat their drumsets, I remembered Meg White’s humble drumming. And so I tossed on a White Stripes live video.

You were seventeen driving down the street laughing so hard while you honked the carhorn in time with Meg White’s drumming, him hanging out the window pounding the top of your car. You were young and dumb and free and maybe a little in love with each other or at least with the wide open emptiness of your days and nights.

In love with the wide openness of Jack White’s guitar. There was an expansiveness to the music that made you feel limitless rather than small. The way the guitar wailed while the drum kept time, kept an addictive and hypnotic rhythm.

You had forgotten the White Stripes for a long time. Sort of wandered in and out of metal and emo scenes, wearing girl jeans and too-small shirts and growing your hair to hide your face. You were a mess. Compulsively unhappy, constantly imagining yourself dying, but then your bestfriend’s boyfriend reminded you of the White Stripes who you hadn’t thought about in so long. Something about the way he smiled when he put on Elephant and the way Meg White’s drumming infected you along with his smile, making your own dumb face smile along with these silly songs with wicked riffs that seemed almost illegal to make this good.

“He’s silly,” my son said when we finished this video.

He is silly. He’s the silliest frontman I can think of. And this is something I’ve always loved about Jack White. The guy is just endlessly creative but doesn’t limit himself to a well crafted curation. This song, I Think I Smell a Rat, is my favorite White Stripes song. The utter simplicity and silliness of it feels like the purest distillation of who Jack White was as an artist during this period of his career.

The song whips ass, man. The guitar rips, the drums echo in my chest, and the lyrics are so so so dumb. Most bands would make this song their own private joke, maybe perform it occasionally live while on tour as a sort of easter egg for long time fans. But few would put it on an album.

But Jack White, man, he just throws it all at the wall. In this way, he reminds me of Takashi Miike. I encourage you to look at his filmography and try to find a cohesive statement about his career. Miike does every genre, sliding in and out of them as easily as switching coats. And while all of Jack White’s White Stripes songs feel and sound like White Stripes songs, part of that is because of the vast freedom he created for this sound, despite the limitations he put on it.

Jack White writes silly songs. He writes dumb songs. He’s bad at singing. But he is godlike with a guitar in his hands, and he uses that overwhelming power and force to make you bob your head and dance along while he sings a song that sounds like he’s making up the lyrics on the spot in the world’s worst version of freestyle.

In some ways, it is the absolute best music for a three year old. It’s on their level.

You’re nineteen and your head’s swimming with chemicals in the 100 degree Tennessee heat while you wait for the White Stripes to take the stage. You’re staring at your feet, or at least you would if you weren’t pressed between so many bodies. You’ve been there for hours watching different bands play, but you’re really there for Jack and Meg White.

You stare at the empty sky and your brain’s draining down your back with all the sweat and anticipation. The chemicals pulse in your veins making the sky and the air pulse with you and your jaw hangs open while you drift off into the distance to keep from melting into all the bodies pressed against you.

And then they’re there on stage and you dissolve against that ripping guitar.

I could sit here and write about the White Stripes all day, filling this post with different videos, different songs. I could even just list my favorite songs by them or explain why, for some reason, I’ve never listened to Jack White’s solo albums, but the only thing I really have to say is that if you find yourself stuck listening to Encanto day after day, hour after hour, throw some White Stripes their way and watch their tiny life change.