DavesMusicDatabase.com is devoted to ranking, rating, and reviewing music of all genres and eras. The DMDB blog serves up album and song reviews, best-of lists, music history snapshots, and music-related essays.
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 | Mojo:Albums of the Year, 1950-2022 |
Mojo is a British music magazine. The “End of Year Lists” link at the bottom of this page shows the year-end album lists from Mojo from 1994 on. However, the magazine has also produced multiple best-of-all-time lists over the years so those have been used to determine albums of the year prior to 1994. Check out other album of the year awards here.
Resources and Related Links:
First posted 12/31/2020; last updated 12/22/2022. |
 | Jack WhiteTop 50 Songs |
Rock singer and guitarist Jack White was born John Anthony Gillis on 7/9/1975 in Detroit, Michigan. He first made his name with ex-wife Meg White in the White Stripes, one of the prominent garage rock revival bands of the early 21st century. He went on to form the Raconteurs and the The Dead Weather before starting his solo career. Click here to see other acts’ best-of lists. Spotify Podcast:Check out the Dave’s Music Database podcast The Best of Jack White, 1997-2022 based on this list. Debut: July 26, 2022, at 7pm CST. New episodes based on Dave’s Music Database lists are posted every Tuesday at 7pm CST.
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Awards:
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Top 50 SongsDave’s Music Database lists are determined by song’s appearances on best-of lists as well as chart success, sales, radio airplay, streaming, and awards. Songs which hit #1 on various charts are noted. (Click for codes to singles charts.)
DMDB Top 1%:
1. Seven Nation Army (The White Stripes, 2003) DMDB Top 5%:
2. Fell in Love with a Girl (The White Stripes, 2001) DMDB Top 10%:
3. Steady, As She Goes (The Raconteurs, 2006) DMDB Top 20%:
11. Lazaretto (Jack White, 2014)
21. Jolene (The White Stripes, 2000) Beyond the DMDB Top 20%:
26. Connected by Love (Jack White, 2018)
31. Many Shades of Black (The Raconteurs, 2008)
41. I Feel Love (Every Million Miles) (The Dead Weather, 2015) Resources and Related Links:
First posted 4/8/2022; last updated 7/26/2022. |
| First posted 12/5/2020. |
Greatest Hits |
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Released: December 4, 2020 Recorded: 1998-2007 Peak: -- US, -- UK, -- CN, -- AU Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, -- world (includes US and UK) Genre: garage rock revival |
Tracks: (1) Let’s Shake Hands (2) The Big Three Killed My Baby (3) Fell in Love with a Girl (4) Hello Operator (5) I’m Slowing Turning into You (6) The Hardest Button to Button (7) The Nurse (8) Screwdriver (9) Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground (10) Death Letter (11) We’re Going to Be Friends (12) The Denial Twist (13) I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself (14) Astro (15) Conquest (16) Jolene (17) Hotel Yorba (18) Apple Blossom (19) Blue Orchid (20) Ball and Biscuit (21) I Fought Piranhas (22) I Think I Smell a Rat (23) Icky Thump (24) My Doorbell (25) You’re Pretty Good Looking for a Girl (26) Seven Nation Army Total Running Time: 82:00 The Players:
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Rating:  4.400 out of 5.00 (average of 4 ratings)
Quotable: “An essential career-spanning collection” – Amazon.com |
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The Studio Albums:
The snapshots of the studio albums indicate those songs featured on Greatest Hits. Appearing after song titles are, when relevant, the date the song was released as a single and its peaks on various charts. Click for codes to singles charts. The White Stripes (1999):
De Stijl (2000):
White Blood Cells (2001):
Elephant (2003):
Get Behind Me Satan (2005):
Icky Thump (2007):
Tracks Not on Previously Noted Albums:
About Greatest Hits: “The White Stripes’ successes have been built on zigging when the rest of the music business is zagging. Thus, for a great band with great fans, a greatest hits compilation for The White Stripes is not only appropriate, but absolutely necessary.” AZ They created “eclectic, often electrifying music, from scuzzy garage rock to traditionalist blues, oddball experiments to stadium-shaking stompers, all of which helped define the sound of indie rock in the Aughts.” PS During “the indie-rock revival of the early 2000s…The White Stripes were easily the most off-kilter band to find widespread acclaim. Jack White had an abundance of talent and a highly specific vision that he pursued with dogged persistence. Meg White provided the anchor for his wild flights of imagination and searing guitar noise.” PS This collection is “a reminder of just how potent they could be together, and that’s as compelling a reason as any to dig into their music all over again.” PS Having said that, a 26-track compilation is pretty hefty for a group who didn’t have a particularly long career. Jack and Meg White released six albums from 1999 to 2007 and then called it quits. During that time, they certainly didn’t accumulate 20+ “hits.” They landed 11 songs on the alternative rock chart, of which only three made it onto the Billboard Hot 100 and only one (Icky Thump) was a top 40 hit. “Judging the band by its chart success, though, is the wrong way to measure The White Stripes’ impact: In addition to their highly stylized musical and visual aesthetic, Jack and Meg White never lacked for riveting songs.” PS “From late Nineties flashes of brilliance through early 2000s underground anthems, masterful MTV Moon Man moments, Grammy-grabbing greatness, and worldwide stadium chants, the songs here are as wide-ranging as you can imagine.” AZ If ever a song proved it can become iconic without storming the charts, it was Seven Nation Army. Despite peaking at a measly #76 on the Billboard Hot 100, the song became a stadium-rattling anthem. Ben Blackwell, Jack White’s uncle and Third Man Records co-owner, recalled watching the White Stripes play at the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands in 2004. When the fans wanted an encore, they didn’t chant lyrics but the now-famous riff of “Seven Nation.” SP “Devotees can quibble about songs they wish had been included, but the essentials all seem to be here, from ‘Seven Nation Army’ to…Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground to Hotel Yorba.” PS The cover of Jolene “still sounds as rough-hewn and foreboding as Dolly Parton’s original is polished and pleading, while the grumbling clavioline and savage guitars on Icky Thump are just as abrasive and disorienting as they ever were.” PS Considering how many non-album singles the Stripes released, this collection could have done a great service by gathering them together here, but instead they only include two non-album cuts (the aforementioned “Jolene” and Let’s Shake Hands). It’s also surprising they didn’t dig up anything from the vaults to give this more appeal to completists. The non-chronological tracklisting “demonstrates anew just how idiosyncratic The White Stripes could be from song to song. The gnashing industrialized murder ballad The Big Three Killed My Baby, from the band’s self-titled first album in 1999, contrasts with the chaotic punk energy of Fell in Love with a Girl, the band’s breakthrough single, from White Blood Cells in 2001. By the same token, the waves of melodramatic despondence that build throughout their cover of Burt Bacharach’s I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself, from 2003’s Elephant, set up the terse, punchy garage-blues riffs of Astro, from the first album.” PS Greatest-hits packages “once served as gateways into bands’ catalogs, or, ideally, a worthwhile survey of the high points of an act’s career. The White Stripes Greatest Hits is both of those things.” PS “In an era of streaming where the idea of a Greatest Hits album may seem irrelevant,” AZ there is something appropriately retro about such a release from a group that felt like a throwback even when they first emerged twenty years ago. Resources and Related Links:
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 | Dave’s Faves:#1’s: 2010-2019 |
These were my personal #1 albums during the 2010s. Check out my #1 albums from other decades here.
First posted 2/5/2022. |
image from editorsmix.fm
In the August 15, 2013, issue of Rolling Stone, more than 20 musicians and others in the music industry were asked to list up to 50 of their favorite live acts. Rolling Stone then crunched the numbers and created a list of current live acts using the critiera that the artists must have toured within the past five years and not announced their retirement.
1. Bruce Springsteen
2. Prince
3. The Rolling Stones
4. Arcade Fire
5. Neil Young
6. Jay-Z
7. Radiohead
8. Jack White
9. Rage Against the Machine
10. My Morning Jacket
11. U2
12. Wilco
13. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
14. The Black Keys
15. Paul McCartney
16. Alabama Shakes
17. Nine Inch Nails
18. Metallica
19. The Roots
20. Kanye West
21. Red Hot Chili Peppers
22. Tom Waits
23. Pearl Jam
24. Dave Matthews Band
25. Phish
26. Leonard Cohen
27. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
28. Patti Smith
29. Muse
30. Madonna
31. David Byrne
32. Sleigh Bells
33. Beyonce
34. Foo Fighters
35. Bruno Mars
36. Florence & the Machine
37. The National
38. Queens of the Stone Age
39. Rush
40. Eric Church
41. Tame Impala
42. Skrillex
43. Mumford & Sons
44. Janelle Monae
45. Lady Gaga
46. Tool
47. Sigur Ros
48. Green Day
49. Taylor Swift
50. Fiona Apple
| First posted 12/31/2012; updated 1/8/2021. |
 | Dave’s Music Database:Top Albums of 2012 |
Based on a combination of year-end lists (see sources at bottom of page) and overall status in Dave’s Music Database, these are the top 25 albums of 2012:
Resources and Related Links:
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Dave Grohl and Jack Black, image from fooarchive.com
If prognosticators are to be believed, my offspring's generation will never experience rock music because the genre has departed to that great musical graveyard in the sky. Of course, rock 'n' roll has survived multiple death sentences practically since birth, making cats' nine lives look like nothing. As far back as 1956, the Maddox Brothers & Rose reshaped Ray Charles’ “I Gotta Woman” into a song rechristened “The Death of Rock and Roll”.
Musing about rock’s demise has become a clichéd and surefire method for sucking readers into publications ironically dependent on the genre’s survival. I would think the bite-the-hand-that-feeds-them approach would backfire, but it must work, because I continuously cross paths with variations of the “Rock and Roll Is Dead” headline.
The latest terminal-illness pronouncement comes from Jack Black, half of the jokey-rock duo Tenacious D and an actor known for rock ‘n’ roll-roles in movies like High Fidelity and School of Rock. Black is pushed to explain the title of the D’s new song, “Rock Is Dead” in a Rolling Stone interview (“Off the Cuff: Jack Black on ‘Bernie,’ Tenacious D and the Death of Rock”, 3 May 2012). He argues no one today has the capacity to rouse audiences like the Beatles. He contends Nirvana was the last band to come close. He concedes there are still worthwhile rockers today – including the Jack White and the Foo Fighters, fronted by none other than ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. He just doesn’t believe any of today’s bands can capture the hearts of a generation.
Since Black references Nirvana and the Foos, Grohl’s opinion on the matter seems particularly pertinent. In an interview with Billboard magazine (“Dave Grohl Q&A: Why Rock Will Never Die…”, 10 January 2012), he jokes that an article surfaces annually asking, “Is Rock Dead?” He responds “There’s always gonna be rock ‘n’ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock ‘n’ roll records, and there will always be rock ‘n’ roll.”
Dave Grohl, image from PopMatters.com
I’m with Grohl. Black’s comments can be viewed as tongue-in-cheek, but they reveal a common belief that rock is dead because there are no bands now like there used to be. In a Musicthinktank.com article (“How Technology Killed Rock and Roll”, 17 January 2011), Corey Crossfield asserts that in the heyday of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones music had an urgency it now lacks.
Well, duh. Rock ‘n’ roll grew up. That baby who was born in the ‘50s is now eligible for AARP. Elvis was hailed as The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll because he was the first to ascend to the throne. The Beatles were at the forefront of the British Invasion because they led the takeover of the hearts of American teens. Girls wanted them and boys wanted to be them. These were landmark artists in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll precisely because they were spawned in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll.
The lack of modern-day superstars on par with The King or The Fab Four is actually an indicator of the genre’s continued influence. In the early days of any genre’s birth, a handful of names become the standard bearers. As the genre becomes more widespread, it is more difficult to stand out in the pack.
Audiences are now so saturated with avenues for discovering music that no genres or musicians can have the same level of impact as those long-ago glory days. Despite the larger-than-life personas of pop divas like Katy Perry, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga, they lack the cultural impact of the stars who launched rock.
Today’s focus on pop giants is often cited as evidence for why rock is on life support. Eric Been notes the absence of rock on the charts in The Atlantic (“10 Years After the White Stripes ‘Saved’ It, Rock Is Again in Crisis”, 5 July 2011). He points to Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” as the only rock song in the top ten of Billboard’s Hot 100 songs of 2010. That didn’t impress The Village Voice, who deemed it the worst song of the year and “the whitest song to ever have the word ‘soul’ in it.”
An article in The Guardian (“RIP rock’n’ roll? Professor of pop reads the last rites”, 10 January 2011) professed a similar fate overseas that year. Only three rock tracks appeared in the top 100 best-selling hits in the UK. DJ Paul Gambaccini – who the article dubbed “the professor of pop” – stated, “It is the end of the rock era…That doesn’t mean there will be no more good rock musicians, but rock as a prevailing style is part of music history.”
Rock may no longer be a prevailing style or rule the roost on the charts, but that doesn’t justify reading last rites. In fact, if one wants to rely on hard numbers, look no further than the same article’s acknowledgement that rock was responsible for more than 1 out of 4 album sales during that same time frame.
Similar numbers surface when looking at top touring acts. In Billboard’s 2011 year-end issue (“2011 – The Year in Music: 25 Top Tours”), U2, Bon Jovi, and Roger Waters take the #1, #2, and #4 slots respectively. With the Eagles, Journey, and Iron Maiden also on the list, roughly a quarter of the list are rock acts.
image from glits.mx
However, even if the numbers are cast aside, it is difficult to argue that rock will never rule again just because it isn’t leading the pack right now. Black pointed to Nirvana as the kings of the hill 20 years ago. The Atlantic article pointed to the White Stripes as the saviors of rock and roll a decade ago. Who’s to say the next rock revolution isn’t right around the corner?
In the Guardian article, NME associate editor Paul Stokes says, “Music is a cyclical business… We’ve been told rock was dead before, in the late 80s, late 90s, but it came back.”
Grohl voiced a similar sentiment in his Billboard interview. He sees today’s musical climate as similar to when Nirvana exploded in 1991. The late ‘80s was dominated by over-produced, formulaic pop and then a “bunch of bands with dirty kids got on MTV and rock ‘n’ roll became huge again.”
Amusingly, within all these articles’ death sentences, no one actually defines rock and roll. History-of-rock.com describes it as “a form of popular music that evolved in the ‘50s from rhythm and blues, characterized by the use of electric guitars, a strong rhythm with an accent on the offbeat, and youth-oriented lyrics.”
However, much like the English language always has exceptions to the rule, so does rock ‘n’ roll. One can’t even get past forefathers like Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Fats Domino before admitting some of the greats made their names tickling the ivories instead of shredding on a six-string.
image from louisianamusicfactory.com
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame itself has not adopted a strict definition, a point made clear by its wide musical range of inductees. It isn’t just that, though. Their requirements for induction don’t even mention rock music. Strange but true.
This lends credence to Crossfield’s assertion that rock ‘n’ roll is more than just a musical genre. It transcends lifestyle and is practically a religion. This viewpoint frames rock more as a force which grows out of its attitude and delivery more than its style.
I subscribe to a more traditional concept, but even rock purists can’t deny how rock has crept into other genres. This lends validity to the notion that rock will never die because it will continue to weave itself into the fabric of other genre’s tapestries.
When it comes to Jack Black vs. Dave Grohl, I’ll side with the Foo man, thank you very much. When my 6YO and his peers are the dominant music-buying force in a decade or so, they may not be buying Jack White albums, but there will still be the residue of White’s saltine crackers lingering on whatever music my son consumes.
image from rcrdlbl.com
Jack White, one of today’s most celebrated musicians, is set to accomplish something this week he couldn’t do with his groups The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, or Dead Weather – land a #1 album on Billboard with his first solo effort, Blunderbuss. White got his start with the 1999 release of The White Stripes, a roots-oriented duo comprised of himself on guitar and vocals and his ex-wife Meg White on drums. De Stijl followed in 2000. Neither charted in the U.S. or U.K.
The group had its big break with 2001’s White Blood Cells, an album which, along with The Strokes’ Is This It, powered a garage-rock revival. The album rates as one of the top 1000 albums of all time and one of the top 100 albums of the 2000s. The album appears on best-of lists from Q Magazine and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Spin magazine ranked it Album of the Year. Its song “Fell in Love with a Girl” ranked in Blender’s Top 500 Songs Since You Were Born (1980-2005) and is rated by the DMDB as one of the top 100 videos of all time.
Fell in Love with a Girl
With high expectations, Jack and Meg delivered an even more acclaimed and commercially successful follow-up with 2003’s Elephant. It was Jack’s first visit to the top ten in the U.S. and in the UK it was not only The White Stripes’ first charting album, but went to #1. It also is the best-selling title of White’s catalog with more than 5 million sales worldwide. Like its predecessor, it also ranks in the DMDB’s top 1000 albums of all time and one of the top 100 albums of the 2000s. It was also named Album of the Year by Mojo, NME, Q, and Spin magazines.
That album spawned Jack’s most celebrated song – “Seven Nation Army.” The DMDB ranks it as one of the top 100 song of the 21st century and one of the top 1000 songs of all time. It also rates as one of the top 100 alternative rock songs of all time and makes best-of lists from Blender, NME, and Q magazines.
Seven Nation Army
Two more White Stripes albums followed – Get Behind Me Satan (2005) and Icky Thump (2007). Like Elephant, they both won the Grammy Award for Alternative Album of the Year. The latter was White’s second #1 album in the UK.
The Raconteurs, image from nme.com
In between those albums, White formed another band, The Raconteurs, with The Greenhornes’ Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler as well as solo artist Brendan Benson. That group released two albums – 2006’s Broken Boy Soldiers and 2008’s Consolers of the Lonely. Both were top ten albums in the U.S. and U.K.
The Dead Weather, image from last.fm
Not content to limit his resume to two groups, White also formed The Dead Weather. Lawrence came along from The Raconteurs and Dean Fertita, guitarist and keyboardist for Queens of the Stone Age, entered the picture. White actually took a back seat as the drummer and put The Kills’ Alison Mosshart up front. That group also released two albums – 2009’s Horehound and 2010’s Sea of Cowards. Both were top ten albums in the U.S., but neither made the top ten in the U.K.
Outside of his group projects, White contributed five solo cuts to the Cold Mountain soundtrack in 2003. That same year, he was rumored to have collaborated with Electric Six on the songs “Danger! High Voltage” and “Gay Bar.” In 2008, he and Alicia Keys dueted on “Another Way to Die,” the theme song for the James Bond film Quantum of Solace. In 2009, he released his first official solo single “Fly Farm Blues,” which was written and recorded in 10 minutes during the filming of the documentary It Might Get Loud which featured White alongside Jimmy Page and The Edge discussing guitar. In 2010, White contributed vocals to three tracks for Danger Mouse’s Rome album.
Now, in 2012, White releases his first full-fledged solo album. Blunderbuss dropped on April 24, 2012. White wrote, recorded, and produced the entire album. January 30 saw the release of the album’s first single, “Love Interruption.” The second single, “Sixteen Saltines,” was released on March 13.
Sixteen Saltines
Elephant |
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Released: April 1, 2003 Peak: 6 US, 12 UK, 5 CN, 4 AU Sales (in millions): 2.1 US, 0.86 UK, 5.7 world (includes US and UK) Genre: garage rock revival |
Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts.
Total Running Time: 49:56 The Players:
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Rating: 4.393 out of 5.00 (average of 30 ratings)
Quotable: “Everything rock should be.” – Goliath Awards: (Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album: The Stripes exploded out of Detroit with a minimalist garage-blues attack: just Jack White on guitar and Meg White on drums, taking on the world. These kids insisted they were a brother and sister, even after people learned they were secretly a divorced couple. But against all odds, the low-budget duo became a global sensation for their sheer rock power” RS’20 after their third album, White Blood Cells, sold more than a half million copies and made stars of the duo. For their follow-up, Elephant, the White Stripes “built out the raw garage rock from their first three albums into an entirely re-imagined sound, taking their pissed-off swagger and channeling it into ambition: blistering blues, whimsical folk, Stooges-esque punk, contemplative love tunes.” GQ Elephant “sounds even more pissed-off, paranoid, and stunning than its predecessor.” AMG It “seethes with raw desperation and lust.” RS’20 “It’s more consistent, exploring disillusionment and rejection with razor-sharp focus.” AMG It is “everything rock should be; it’s fiery and loud on one track, soft and slow on the next, with poignant lyrics and absolutely devastating electric guitar.” GL “In case we’d forgotten, we were reminded that Jack can fucking shred on guitar. GQ “This album contains some of the finest guitar work of this, or any, generation, both from a technical standpoint and an affective standpoint.” GL “You can almost feel the breeze from the amps on your face as the riffs strut out – and he squeezed more tone out of the electric guitar than almost anyone else that decade.” GU The album “cemented Jack White’s reputation as a musical purist” PM and “much-lampooned fetish for analogue production.” GU “By recording the album entirely on pre-1960s equipment, White encapsulated the gritty open-wound rawness of the early delta blues masters he is heavily influenced by. Yet there is an indisputable modernism to Elephant that makes…[the White Stripes as] fresh sounding today as they did” PM then. “Chip-on-the-shoulder anthems like the breathtaking opener, Seven Nation Army, which is driven by Meg White’s explosively minimal drumming, and The Hardest Button to Button, in which Jack White snarls ‘Now we're a family!’ – one of the best oblique threats since Black Francis sneered ‘It’s educational!’ all those years ago – deliver some of the fiercest blues-punk of the White Stripes’ career.” AMG “It’s now impossible to imagine a world without ‘Seven Nation Army,’ chanted from football terraces to political rallies.” GL What has been “coined the most recognizable riff in rock” GL “set the template for Elephant: brooding moods, measured out in eighths by Meg White, would tip over into cathartic squalls of blues rock.” GU “There’s No Home for You Here sets a girl’s walking papers to a melody reminiscent of ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground’ (though the result is more sequel than rehash), driving the point home with a wall of layered, Queen-ly harmonies and piercing guitars, while the inspired version of I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself goes from plaintive to angry in just over a minute, though the charging guitars at the end sound perversely triumphant.” AMG “At its bruised heart, Elephant portrays love as a power struggle, with chivalry and innocence usually losing out to the power of seduction. I Want to Be the Boy tries, unsuccessfully, to charm a girl’s mother.” AMG The “twisted acoustic soul” RS’11 of You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket, “a deceptively gentle ballad, reveals the darker side of the Stripes’ vulnerability, blurring the line between caring for someone and owning them with some fittingly fluid songwriting.” AMG “The battle for control reaches a fever pitch on the ‘Fell in Love with a Girl’-esque Hypnotize, which suggests some slightly underhanded ways of winning a girl over before settling for just holding her hand.” AMG “Jack plays guitar hero” RS’20 in “the show-stopping Ball and Biscuit. [It is] seven flat-out seductive minutes of preening, boasting, and amazing guitar prowess” AMG and “electric-blues freakery” RS’11 “that ranks as one the band’s most traditionally bluesy (not to mention sexy) songs.” AMG “Interestingly, Meg’s star turn, In the Cold, Cold Night, is the closest Elephant comes to a truce in this struggle, her kitten-ish voice balancing the song’s slinky words and music.” AMG “While the album is often dark, it’s never despairing; moments of wry humor pop up throughout, particularly toward the end. Little Acorns begins with a sound clip of Detroit newscaster Mort Crim’s Second Thoughts radio show, adding an authentic, if unusual, Motor City feel. It also suggests that Jack White is one of the few vocalists who could make a lyric like ‘Be like the squirrel’ sound cool and even inspiring.” AMG “Likewise, the showy Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine – on which White resembles a garage rock snake-oil salesman – is probably the only song featuring the word ‘acetaminophen’ in its chorus.” AMG “It’s True That We Love One Another, which features vocals from Holly Golightly as well as Meg White, continues the Stripes’ tradition of closing their albums on a lighthearted note.” AMG “Almost as much fun to analyze as it is to listen to, Elephant overflows with quality – it’s full of tight songwriting, sharp, witty lyrics, and judiciously used basses and tumbling keyboard melodies that enhance the band's powerful simplicity (and the excellent The Air Near My Fingers features all of these).” AMG “Crucially, the White Stripes know the difference between fame and success; while they may not be entirely comfortable with their fame, they've succeeded at mixing blues, punk, and garage rock in an electrifying and unique way ever since they were strictly a Detroit phenomenon. On these terms, Elephant is a phenomenal success.” AMG |
Resources and Related Links:
Other Related DMDB Pages: 
First posted 3/24/2008; last updated 5/1/2022. |
 | Seven Nation ArmyThe White Stripes |
Writer(s): Jack White (see lyrics here) Released: March 7, 2003 First Charted: March 8, 2003 Peak: 76 US, 12 AR, 13 MR, 7 UK, 61 CN, 17 AU, 2 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, 2.4 UK, 7.08 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 0.3 radio, 788.27 video, 1969.19 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:Built on what Rolling Stone called “the greatest riff of the decade,” RS’09 “Seven Nation Army” is “the place where Led Zeppelin meets the future” PD as “Jack White weighs in with some Jimmy Page-inspired guitar riffage” PD that announced him as “this generation’s surest thing to a Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall-of-Famer.” CS That “Army” sported “one of the catchiest, most-recognized bass-sounding lines” SA is all the more astonishing considering it wasn’t played on a bass at all. The sound was actually created with an octave pedal and a semi-acoustic AB’00 “low-registered, seven-string guitar.” SA White said he planned to use the riff if ever asked to do a James Bond film theme. Considering that unlikely, he used it for this song. In 2008, he and Alicia Keys performed the theme song (“Another Way to Die”) for the James Bond film Quantum of Solace. SF The song title came about from what Jack thought the Salvation Army was called when he was a child. The subject of the song regards the White Stripes rise in popularity and the subsequent gossip that arises. SF He said the song “is about this character who is involved in the realm of gossip with his friends and family and is so enraged by it that he wants to leave town.” TC Jack “howls about a rage so intense, he could take on an army all by himself.” RS’09 Of course, he isn’t alone – the song “wouldn’t have half of its menace were it not for the simplicity of [drummer Meg White’s] thumping, insistent floor tom.” PF “Army” restores “an element of hard rocking blues to what otherwise borders on throbbing dance music.” AMG It also was “the coolest song ever to become a soccer hooligan chant” MX as Italian soccer fans latched on to the song while facing different nations in the 2006 World Cup. SF Since then, it has become an inescapable anthem in sports stadiums and arenas and has been covered by Audioslave, the Flaming Lips, and Rihanna. It also sported an iconic video which has earned a reputation “as one of the most effective motion-sickness-inducing devices since the invention of spinning carnival rides.” SF Resources:
Related Links:
Last updated 7/6/2025. |
