So what’s the deal on Jack and Meg White? From reading countless interviews, articles and album reviews I’ve still yet to come across a consensus as to their relationship. Husband and wife? Brother and sister? Ex-husband and wife? Cousins? Dopers, I turn to you to put an end to this mystery.
On a side note, any one else share my opinion that Elephant kicks major ass? “Girl, You have no faith in medicine” is going to destroy my CD player from constant repetition.
Husband and Wife.
Rolling Stone gave it 5 stars. Spin says it’s “great”. I gotta buy it.
Last weekend, our the newspaper said brother and sister (but that they had been mistaken for husband and wife)
Hmm, I thought the straight dope is ex-husband and wife, so who knows.
I picked up Elephant the other day, but haven’t listened to it all the way through yet. So far, so good. I do like it better than White Blood Cells, but I’m still awfully fond of De Stijl.
They’re brother and sister. Think about it, they look just alike.
To add to Beadalin’s list of cites, there’s an article in this Sunday’s New York Times about the White Stripes that says
I think I’ve found the best proof yet. Here’s a copy of Jack and Meg’s marriage license and divorce certificate.
Surprisingly, The Smoking Gun was not the first on the scene with this info. I think TSG may be slipping…
I am friends with a girl who went to elementary and high school with Meg White in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. They weren’t super close, but definitely knew each other - as she put it, “we were in Brownies together” (delivered in sort of a shocked, disbelieving tone upon encountering her former classmate on the cover of some national magazine).
Anyway, they are indeed ex-husband and wife, “unless she had a brother hidden away in the attic that I didn’t know about for ten years”. Another friend of mine went to the wedding of another Meg White classmate in 1997 and sat at a guest table with the still-married Meg and Jack White, who mentioned in casual wedding-guest conversation that they had recently started a band together.
This isn’t a “guy I know who went to school with this girl who dated this one guy” type relationship; these friends are honest and trustworthy, still close, and have no reason to bullshit.
I don’t have Elephant yet (getting it soon), but I have found the reviews interesting. Crusty mainstream magazines Spin and Rolling Stone gave it gushing, overexcited reviews (5 stars in RS? That happens once ever seven years or so, for god’s sake). On the other hand, snooty indie review site Pitchfork
gave Elephant a 6.9. They gave White Blood Cells a pre-hype (August 2001) rating of 9.0.
This, to me, comes across as Spin and Rolling Stone desparately trying to look cool after the band blew up fully a year after their last album came out and had been ignored by both magazines. Pitchfork, on the other hand, is pulling the “they’re mainstream now so they suck” move that makes all indepent-biased magazines no better than the big corporate behemoths. I was execting this very thing to happen and was not disappointed.
Dosen’t matter. I dig the band and will be purchasing Elephant soon.
Here is a somewhat more balanced review from the same site that brought you the marriage license and divorce certificate.
I have Elephant, and love it more than any other of my White Stripes albums, however it does lag a bit in the middle. I could do without “I Wanna Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother’s Heart” and “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket”, but “Seven Nation Army” and “Black Math” and “There’s No Home For You Here” fucking rock my balls, and there’s enough other good songs on the album to definitely justify buying it new.
Anyway, I have to confess I bought the brother and sister thing until reading this just now. Now my whole world is in turmoil. Up is down, black is white, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
hee hee. I spoke with such authority on the subject and it seems I was wrong. So solly.
Btw, the new album rawks. I just bought it at lunch.
Hate to add more confusion, but Jack White says in a current Onion A.V. Club interview that they’re brother and sister.
I suppose this is rather open to interpretation, since he’s discussing what people think about them and the ambiguity of their relationship. And really I’ll take chorizo’s story about it. But he’s at least maintaining the fiction here. (That’s a really interesting interview, by the way.)
Re. “Elephant,” I got it a few days ago and totally love it. A more mature songwriting voice, and slightly more complex recording and such than “White Blood Cells,” which was to be expected. It seems to me they’re keeping the basic elements that make them great and learning how to incorporate more variety and nuance into the music.
(Note: I’m not a music critic and know next to nothing about current pop music, so my opinion on this is necessarily underinformed. My two cents.)
As I understand it they are a divorced couple who pretend to be brother and sister.
The new album ROCKS!!! I love every song on it, the fist pumping rawkers, the sweet slow f*cked-up-love songs, and everything in between. Wow. I listened to it 3 times in a row all the way through the first time I listened to it. Most great albums (Radiohead’s Kid A, Amon Tobin’s Supermodified and Cat Power’s What Would the Community Think? all come to mind) take several listens for me to really get comfortable with them and get in to the groove (Radiohead’s Kid A, Amon Tobin’s Supermodified and Cat Power’s What Would the Community Think? all come to mind as albums I knew were great, but still took some adjusting to before I could love 'em full-on), but not this one. I was pumping my fist in the air from the first time “Seven Nation Army” hit the loud part. Yeeeha.
By the way, at SXSW I heard a band that I think White Stripes fans should check out. They were called The Immortal Lee County Killers and they rocked my socks in much the same way that this album does. Highly recommended.
LC
Ahhhhh, the White Stripes. The latest in an endless series of bands that is going to save rock n’ roll.
Save it from what?
Let’s see, before the White Stripes, it was The Vines who were going to save rock n’ roll. No, wait, it was The Hives. No, The Strokes. No, Radiohead. No, Stone Temple Pilots. No, Bruce Springsteen.
Not that they had very much credibility with me before, but after Jack White’s remarks in the March 29 issue of Billboard Magazine, their credibility is a very large negative number.
White said, "There were so many restrictions," when talking about the recording of Elephant. *“White Blood Cellshad tons of restrictions, too, like no guitar solos, no blues, no cover songs. We’re always trying to limit ourselves to see what we can come up with. When you open the door and say you’re going to record on Pro Tools, and you’re going to use digital tricks to fix everything, and you’re going to have a string section and 18 musicians are going to play on it, * you’ve opened yourself up to such opportunity it starts destroying creativity. You’re trying to make it easier to create, but you’re making it harder. Putting rules on yourself is what really makes it easier.”
No, putting rules and limits on yourself is precisely the thing that kills creativity, which is why your new album sounds exactly like the last one.
The Beatles never put any limits or rules on themselves, in fact they ignored the rules and I daresay they are going to be remembered long after you are forgotten Jack.
Hmm. Payton’s Servant, this may be a discussion for its own thread, but I think he’s talking about the same phenomenon that makes independent films often (not always) so much more original than formulaic, big-budget blockbusters that rely on high-tech special effects. In high-budget music, the production can be so intense and transformative that production itself replaces actual musical innovation. A songwriter can indicate an emotional crescendo with one striking, novel phrase, or he/she can do it with a tired cliche we’ve heard a million times, backed up with a music swell from an entire philharmonic orchestra.
Think about the Elizabethan sonnet; it’s an extremely restrictive form, and yet the restrictions of writing within it led to some incredibly innovative uses of the language.
You’re absolutely right about the Beatles (to whom no one here is comparing the White Stripes); they didn’t put limitations on themselves. But they didn’t have to go inventing limitations; the limits were already there, in that the technology they were using was (by today’s standards) extremely primitive. The Beatles were innovators both in music-writing and in technology, and especially in using technology to enhance the songwriting. But bands today have access to so much high-tech gimmickry that they can make something that sounds kinda pretty without much actual musical ability or inventive songwriting.
On the other hand, I totally agree with you on one point: people who say the White Stripes are going to save rock and roll (which no one said in this thread, I don’t think) are fatheads, and are clearly not paying attention to much beyond MTV.
Ooooooooo! Let Jack White put that in his pipe and smoke it!
Dork.
I just want to kidnap Jack and Meg and make them dress in purple and green.
I think the new album is great, and I Brent DiCrensczio at Pitchfork is a whiny little punk.
No seriously, I love the new album and there was a huge outcry in the Pitchfork letters section about their review. There was also a comment in on of their news article that suggested Mr DiCrensczio’s review held opinions that were not shared by the other Pitchfork writers. So I’m guessing that Pitchfork in general likes it and that Brent DiC is just being obstreperous and snotty.
Yeah, but the Beatles, for the most part, sucked.
Also, I don’t get the ‘long after you’re forgotten’ bit, either. I always see this come up in reference to musical artists, but as far as I can tell, a lot of music doesn’t get forgotten, no matter how minor the artist was. If I can tell you all about A-ha, The 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Archies and Soft Cell, I expect that we’ll be remembering the White Stripes for a long time to come.
Not that this has anything to do with it, but those are the two ugliest people on the planet. If there is a merciful god in heaven, he will prevent these two from reproducing. With anyone.
As far as the music is concerned, living under a rock had prevented me from hearing a single note! I haven’t heard any, so the jury is still out.
And no, Gex, the Beatles did not “suck” for the most part. Who the hell is “1910 Fruitgum Co.”?
Fagjunk Theology: Not just for sodomite propagandists anymore.