The White Stripes Say Goodbye

Yesterday, the White Stripes issued a statement announcing the end of the band. After denying all the usual reasons bands dissolve (creative differences, personality conflicts, inexplicable illness, etc), Jack and Meg White signed off with a tongue-in-cheek comment about how the White Stripes belong to their audience now. Needless to say, all of this surprised many people. Sure, the band hadn't released a new album in four years and Jack was involved in (approximately) eighty million other bands, but it was always assumed that new White Stripes music would appear eventually. Apparently, that day will never come. The White Stripes are done. Fourteen years and six albums later, what is the legacy of the White Stripes?

Well, there's no doubt that that they were one of the most important musical acts of the 2000s. As the late-1990s, the second heyday of electronica and heavily processed pop music, receded into memory, the White Stripes were held up as a return to good ol' rawk music. Along with contemporary acts like the Strokes and (to a lesser extent) the Hives, the sound of loud electric guitars gave music critics shivers. Especially for an older generation, who came of age worshiping at the altars of Saints Zeppelin and Sabbath, Jack's murky guitar heroics and passionate yelping were godsends. Then you had Meg's idiot-proof drumming, both beloved and despised, but undeniably powerful in its simplicity. Here was updated blues rock, repackaging familiar riffs within punk's raw, untrained energy and immediacy. As the band evolved, strands of American folk music was added into the mix, along with other disparate elements, best heard on Get Behind Me Satan (2005) and Icky Thump (2007). They rocked and they rolled. They even gave the world the decade's best guitar riff ("Seven Nation Army," which you should already know). The White Stripes were the great American rock band of the 2000s.

Most of the band's legacy will live on through two albums: White Blood Cells (2001) and Elephant (2003). White Blood Cells was the album that brought the White Stripes into the national spotlight, through the ramshackle guitar pop of "Fell In Love With A Girl" (and its unforgettable video). It also features great tracks like "Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground" and "Hotel Yorba," a favorite of college-aged acoustic guitarists the world over. While White Blood Cells shows the band at their most varied and dynamic, Elephant shows them at their most confident and powerful. Opening with the aforementioned "Seven Nation Army," the rest of the album's fifty minutes serves as a virtually uninterrupted collection of the band's greatest hits. Along with the singles "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" and "The Hardest Button To Button," you've got manic guitar freakouts ("Black Math"), low-key blues sketches ("In The Cold, Cold Night") and truly bizarre and wonderful experiments like "Little Acorns." Both albums have become unquestioned classics in the years since they've been released, and for good reason. Featuring most of the White Stripes' best songs, they stand as the two pinnacles in the the career of an essential band.