So why is The White Stripes’ Elephant on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
Elephant is The White Stripes’ album that includes “Seven Nation Army,” their best-known song, I’d wager.
If its two billion plus plays on Spotify as of this writing aren’t enough to drive that point home, consider this: “Seven Nation Army” is a sports stadium and concert venue standard.
Here’s a great Conan O’Brien clip with Jack White that’s worth watching for a few reasons (one of them being that it’s just cool that White and Conan are IRL friends).
White says something so simple and profound and revealing about the phenomenon of “Seven Nation Army” having become an integral part of sporting events: “It becomes folk music and people take it over.”
It speaks to a generosity of spirit and, let’s face it, an endlessly creative musician driven to put his art out into the world.
One of the super unique aspects of The White Stripes of course is that it’s a duo: Jack on guitar and Meg on drums, the definition of maxing out on minimalism. So with “Seven Nation Army,” White generates those iconic bass-like sounds by running his semi-acoustic guitar through a pitch-shifting octave pedal to replicate those subterranean tones.
And as wild as that is, it only starts to scratch the surface of the influence of one single song on popular culture. Another example is that I’ve heard the song covered by bands a number of times, including a delightfully swanky and loungey version by a band – the name of which I wish I could note here – at a rooftop bar and restaurant called Perch in downtown Los Angeles.
Similarly, the Ben L’Oncle Soul’s soulful for days version is the critical piece as to why their self-titled album “snuck into” the best 1,000 albums ever at #878.
And with that said, I haven’t yet even touched on “Seven Nation Army” the song itself.
I think there’s something primal to it, something minimalist and powerful and even sultry about it all at once, Meg White’s thunderous drums and Jack’s low toned so-simple-it-gets-wired-into-your-DNA guitar melody.
Another way to say it is that “Seven Nation Army” is as pure White Stripes as it gets.
Moving on to the album as a whole, Elephant is the moment The White Stripes transcended from a garage rock curiosity to proving they could dominate both indie cred lists and massive stadiums.
And here’s the crazy thing, at least to me: “Seven Nation Army” isn’t even my favorite track on Elephant, and it might struggle to crack my personal top three or four slots.
The top slot easily goes to the astonishing “There’s No Home For You Here.”
If “Seven Nation Army” is “the most White Stripes song ever,” “There’s No Home For You Here” is the song approximately zero other bands on the planet could ever hope to pull off. At turns epic and grandiose, sweetly gentle at others, the combination is delightful and mind melting at the same time.
Seriously: the likes of The Beatles or Led Zeppelin or Queen or a tiny elite slice of outfits have ever touched this kind of territory – and only rarely at that.
“Hypnotize” and “Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine” play in similar garage and punk blues territory, and quite outstandingly so.
“Hypnotize” is a frantic jolt that feels like it could fall apart at any second, while “Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine” is two minutes of garage fury, Jack and Meg sounding like they’re trying to outhowl the apocalypse.
I absolutely adore those rare moments when Meg White gets in front of the microphone on lead vocals, and the dead simple and dead effective “In The Cold, Cold Night” is a perfect example.
And speaking of Meg, she and British singer Holly Golightly join Jack on the album closer, a fun and breezy acoustic singalong jam, “It’s True That We Love One Another.”
Pop culture stuff that has something to do with The White Stripes’ Elephant
Here’s even more on the phenomenon of “Seven Nation Army” becoming a sports stadium staple, which dates back to European soccer/football matches in the early 2000s, just after the release of Elephant:
It all started in a UEFA Champions’ League group game between Club Brugge KV and AC Milan in the 2003/04 season at the San Siro in Italy. The song had been playing on the radio that night in a pub where all the Club Brugge supporters were present. They started chanting to the tune of Seven Nation Army when the striker Andres Mendoza scored. The fans kept on chanting it the whole way from the pub towards San Siro, where it was picked up by the Italian fans too. AC Milan’s defeat was an unforgettable phenomenon since it was one of the most legendary teams in all of football’s history. Club Brugge ended up going out of the competition, but this period in history was the beginning of a revolutionary football chant.
Not bad for a minimalist riff recorded in a London studio.
Some stats & info about The White Stripes – Elephant
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Detroit Bands, Garage Rock Revival, Garage Punk, Alternative Rock, Blues Rock, Hard Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #449
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was Elephant released? 2003
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #46 out of 1,000
The White Stripes’ Elephant on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from The White Stripes’ Elephant that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
I’m gonna fight ’em off – a seven nation army couldn’t hold me back.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.