The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army"

We're gonna talk about it, an indie single coming from a boy and a girl. We wrote these lyrics for it, now this song is sung all across the world. From the deserts to the stadiums, you have heard this song. And once we break it down and break the sins, you'll be like, oh my God. You must listen to one song. You gotta listen to one song. There are no other options. Cause you must listen to one song. Yeah. Woo! Luxury, today we're talking about a rock song that kind of broke all the rules. No bass guitar, no vocal chorus, and they're doing it fully in analog, right when we're in the middle of a digital music revolution. That's right, Diallo, and somehow it becomes one of the most recognizable pieces of music on planet Earth. Not only does it become a multi-platinum global hit, it also has this whole second life as a universal stadium chant. I mean, this might be the most famous riff of the 21st century. If you haven't guessed it yet, we're talking one song, and that song is Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury, a.k.a. the guy who whispers interpellation. And this is One Song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres to tell you why they deserve one more listen. That's right. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And you can watch One Song on YouTube. While you're there, please like and subscribe. All right. So today we're talking Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes when we first started talking about doing this podcast. This was on our short list. I don't know why it's taking us so long. but now we're here. Luxury. When did you first come across this song and the white stripes? It's so funny. There's a detail that doesn't matter, but it's a little bit relevant to the story, which is that I can't remember if an ex-girlfriend introduced me to the band or if I introduced her to the band, but that kind of matters given what this is. It's like, I think I'm like, I definitely introduced her, but she might've introduced it to me. Start a fight with your ex. That's smart. And the song was from DeSteel, the second record. It's pretty good looking for a girl, which as I say that out loud, she did. It feels like something a guy would introduce to a girl, but maybe she introduced it to me. I don't know. R, if you're out there listening, R, let me know, because I'm actually curious what your memory of this is. Oh, yeah, you're pretty good looking for a girl, but your back is so broken. Oh, yeah, the lyrics are crazy. In the year 2000, that did not sound like other stuff happening in the year 2000. That was not 90s music. That was throwback. That was 60s. It felt lo-fi. they had reference points that i sort of vaguely you know i felt 60s garage rock in there totally but it was like a new band that had like a color scheme oh absolutely by the way i almost wore like my black and white today yeah black white and red i would have done it um but you know it's interesting because this is 2000 and this is the first wave of what i guess you could say was like that lo-fi movement yeah we're gonna talk about garage rock yeah i mean revival if you will yeah maybe it's just a revival of bands like the hives we're talking about the white stripes maybe the strokes are in there the yeah yeah yeah the vines maybe it's just international noise conspiracy like just be bands with the word the in their in their names maybe that's what's the revival take a noun put an s at the end of it right but the actually we were laughing because it might have been the revival of the word the it was the it was the the revival it was the the revival which by the way is part of the whole 60s like vibe remember when we did our segment about that garage rock record nuggets but on the 60s band you look at the liner notes every single band is a the strawberry and i talked about the seeds the the-ness really does evoke something 60s because through the 90s you bands weren't doing that anymore so there was something i think consciously referential in the sound in the recording which we'll get into and then the name it kind of matters that there's a definite article at the beginning of the band's name so jack white in this moment i mean this is literally the year i start making music and in retrospect it's crazy I see now clearly how much of an influence he was coming from an indie rock scene, but doing something that has like an aesthetic quality, trying to do something that has a visual component. My very first gig ever as luxury. Not only did I deliver a band playing eight songs that we'd rehearsed, but I also had like a hairstylist. I had a jacket that you may have seen on my album cover right there with the heart on it. My good friend Yanni like made that for me. She was I had a stylist and we had videos for every song. And the importance of that is that I was looking to do kind of a package, not just music. And Jack White is doing this from the get go, too. He understands the value of maybe branding. You want to call it so interesting because this is around the time when I'm professionally DJing. You know, I'm out of college in 2000 and I'm professionally DJing. And I think similarly, I was thinking about how can I present my DJing in an artistic way? And I even cut through the clutter. Yeah. And I even thought I was going to form a band because I was like, there should be a band called the Malabies. and my theory was the malibu i was like malibu is such i just moved to california and i was like malibu is such a unique neighborhood i was like i wish i knew i basically formed in my head a band i knew i couldn't really be a member of because i would have been inauthentic but i thought there should have been like a band that had the lo-fi sound but it was based in malibu the guys in the band were all guys who grew up in like malibu you know almost like the incubus guys is this like a Surf rock sound, though? Because that's what that sounds like to me. Surf rock meets garage rock. Right. But sort of packaged like the strokes. I was like, I even, because I'm working as an intern at a record label at the time, Hollywood Records. Shout out to Hollywood Records. So a New York visual, like a 70s CBGB Velvet Underground visual. Yeah, Velvet Underground visual, but from Malibu. Malibu. And I was going to name them the Malibis, and I sort of saw myself as Brian Epstein. Okay. The last name Epstein has really been ruined. You know what? Maybe. Brian Epstein. You might not want to do that yet. Brian Epstein is the guy who sort of packaged the Beatles. And I thought, man, I'm going to be like Brian and I'm going to find some guys in Malibu who play instruments. You're a visionary. I'm going to put them together. I'm going to call them the Malibis. This was Diallo at the record label as an A&R assistant. Unfortunately, I never found the group. You couldn't find your Elvis. And the Malibis never happened. You're Colonel Parker. But we could have changed music, man. You could have been the Malcolm McLaren of surf rock meets New York aesthetic. What about you, Diallo? Were the White Stripes already on your radar when Seven Nation Army came out in 2003? Like 100%. And I think that it's one of those things where perspective matters. It's like the same way when Snoop came out with Drop It Like It's Hot. I was like, oh, this is his comeback song. When Seven Nation Army came out, I was like, oh, wow, they're really going strong for a long time. Because I had gotten into the White Stripes in early 2000. Right. I was hanging out with a female DJ at The Standard. I probably thought she was kind of cute. I remember we went back to her apartment. You thought it was a date and it wasn't a date. I thought it was a date. She just wanted to play me records. There was something cooking in the kitchen. It might have been drug-related. I realize that this may not have been the girl for me, but her taste in music was impeccable. And I'll never forget that she brought out these two records that look so similar because they both have the black, white, and red color scheme. And one was their first album, just the White Stripes. That's their debut album. Epidemously. Yes, exactly. And it had just a great vibe. I was really into it. And on that one, I think my favorite song was St. James Infirmary. well folks i'm going down to st james infirmary you see st james infirmary by the way just one of these really ancient songs it's a folk song it's a it's a full jazz blues standard it has quote unquote no owner so to speak right yeah lost the time at least i think you know louis armstrong is usually credited for uh making it really popular jack white says that he actually discovered this song by watching a betty boop cartoon from a long time ago let it go let it go but it's really old song and my favorite version is so old school atmospheric my favorite version is the king oliver version check this out what year is that from 1930 uh so like king oliver and his orchestra 1930 you know like these are like the oldest of jazz there's so much to unpack here and it's super relevant i'm so glad you play that because this is that's so new orleans sounding right it's like a funeral march that becomes a celebration yes with the second line right that's the first part that's slow and jorge like and they've got like atmospheric bills in there you can see like the the smoke coming off It's super New Orleans, which is the heart of the origins of jazz. But also what I'm hearing that's so relevant to our show is like the recording itself has so much baked into it, so much emotion, so much history. And that's what Jack White falls in love with. It's the songs and the sounds almost equally. And the and the aesthetic, obviously, as we're talking about the full package of what music is, is not simply the notes. It's everything else surrounding it, the recording, the look, the packaging, if you will. There's something spooky about Jack White's aesthetic, you know, with the black hair that hangs down to the sides. And sometimes he has like a Michael Jackson kind of pallor. Like there was a moment where he was doing a little bit of an MJ thing in there. And it's very mysterious. White, like black and white and red aesthetic. Absolutely. Totally. And I think part of that mystery. Look, it's really interesting to remember that Jack White gets his start as an upholsterer. And part of his story is that he's not ever thinking he'll be a musician. He's a drummer. He works at he has his own upholstery company. He is an entrepreneur. So that's super relevant, too. So when he's 21, he owns his own upholstery business called Third Man. And why that's relevant is because even in that moment, he knew there was something about the aesthetics. Everything was yellow. So he had his invoices were yellow. He had a yellow van that he would show up at your house and pick up your old furniture to reupholster it. This sounds like some black phone stuff from that movie. It sounds spooky. Like he shows up in a yellow van and he's got yellow paper. I'd be like, oh, call the cops. Don't let him in your house. Don't let that man in your house. But he had the aesthetic thing. And there's also something almost borderline on the nose about upholstery. You take something old, right? And you refurbish it. So this is what his life is outside of the adoration of music. And he plays in a band with his other upholsterer employee. So that's really his first band is the upholsterer band. Wow. And he already has the aesthetic thing and he already has the two piece thing going on. Yeah. It's just the two guys and they just he jumped to guitar because they were both drummers. And he was like, all right, I'll play guitar. And they would jam out as a two piece. Wow. And that's the sort of musical formative years already has refurbishing old stuff and color and two-pieceness. Yeah, it's interesting. He moved from yellow to red and kept the black and the white. But around the same time, he also met Meg. And she worked at a restaurant that had an open mic night. And he was writing poetry. And then they started dating and eventually started making music together. They get married. He takes her last name. He was Jack Gillis. She was Meg White. He took her last name. And they start making some of their earliest music together. I find that really interesting because when they first came on my radar after the girl played the vinyl for me, they came across my radar again when I was working at the record label. And the rumor was that they were actually brother and sister, and they were from – I think they were claiming they were from Memphis. I was going to say they started that rumor. Yeah, exactly. They started the rumor. Well, because Jack said he wanted people to focus on the music, and he thought siblings is interesting, but if we're romantically linked, it's going to be all about the romance. Sure, buddy. totally but that was like how they first came on my radar i was like oh yeah there's this brother and sister combo but they seem to have this weird sexual energy which is kind of crazy and they're making this really cool lo-fi music and i guess that the red came in because meg was a big fan of peppermint she loved peppermint right totally yeah so so jack white by the way going back to the upholstery roots he had he had the idea to be like you like peppermints why don't we paint that on your drum kit and he did that yeah he is the aesthetic mastermind like he's not hiring he's not farming out the work i love that he himself is the craftsman behind all of that stuff he's always been sort of a arbiter of cool yeah oh yeah just a cool guy so today we're talking about uh their song seven nation army just to bring it back to the blues because jack white's influences it's an important part of like what we're listening to and i really love there's two things first of all he adores blind willie mctell and sunhouse he's even said that his favorite song of all time is sunhouse's grinning in your face don't you mind people grinning in your face don't mind people grinning it's so simple and stripped down there's not it's there's no guitar there's no drums it's just voice and clapping and yet the song structure is totally there like I know what the tempo is. And that clap is basically a beat. Yeah. And his singing is impeccable. And the notes are blues. This is the blues. It's the pentatonic scale. We only heard three or four notes in there, but they were deep, rich, dark notes with the storytelling. And the recording matters, too. The fact of it being this really old recording. I love how cynical and angry it is. It's like, don't you mind people grinning in your face? Yeah. No, it's the storytelling. You're hooked immediately. The human voice. And obviously this is important to Jack White, but an interesting thing. So his influences include these blues legends, but they also include like Iggy and the Stooges. And like he has this great quote about Led Zeppelin. He goes, he doesn't trust anyone who doesn't like Led Zeppelin. He also said that about Dylan. So his influences include the classic, the real legit blues singers. They include the next wave, the Led Zeppelins, et cetera. And obviously the Velvet Underground's in there. We're talking about Mo Tucker when we get into the drums a little bit later. Going back to the colors for a second, there's just a really great interview with Rick Rubin. I should say, go back and listen to it on Broken Record. Can't recommend it highly enough. Pod friend of the pod. He uses the word obfuscation a lot when he talks about the early days of the band and the color scheme and there being a two-piece and one of them being Meg. Because he says quote this is my way of sneakily not getting called white boy blues Stratocaster nonsense And that quote really jumped out to me because I kind of understood from the scene and from culture and being an aware person he wanted to make sure he loved this music legitimately he has an authentic appreciation for the blues but because led zeppelin happened and because we have this history of like appropriation and culturally there's a lot of questions that are cultural cultural questions shall we say that happen when a white male does the blues plays the blues sure so in his mind he's thinking i'm going to do a lot of things at once and there's going to be a little bit of obfuscation i'm going to do a little misdirect you're going to be noticing a lot of other things you're going to be hearing my storytelling maybe this isn't like musically native to to me and my family like to me the white stripes for a cartoon it had the simple color scheme almost like child there's a childlike quality childlike quality looking for a girl sounds like a child's song right it's one of those things where like It's hard to hate on a cartoon, whether it's Yo Gabba Gabba or so many other things that come in like, you know, candy colors. Yeah. Literally talk about peppermint here. You know, you're not going to throw tomatoes at that because you just get the sense. Not only is it probably an art project, but if you also bought the idea that this was brother and sister out of the woods of Tennessee somewhere. Yeah. Well, you're just not going to hold them to the same standard if he shows up. Hey, I'm Jack Gillis and I play the blues. And the lyrical content matters, too. So if you made a list of all the things that they are doing beyond like not just the pentatonic scale and the blues song structures, they're doing all of these other things in addition to that. And one thing they're not doing that's classic blues, I would say, is kind of lyrically speaking, they aren't necessarily hitting the same things. They're hitting a lot of similar themes. And there's a vibe that's very similar. But he's talking about, hey, little apple blossom, what seems to be the problem. He's kind of taking it lyrically a lot of times in a more innocent. I like the word innocent, especially on the early stuff. A lot of the direction lyrically is kind of another obfuscation away from classic 20s and 30s, like black men singing the blues recordings that he adored. And we speak of innocence. I mean, think about their music video for Fell in Love with a Girl. It's literally a child's toy. It's Lego. Just to close the loop on Jack White's influences, I think there's a couple of bands that he sees when he's a girl. So they're the recordings. He's growing up listening to records, right? But then there comes the part where he's in the scene. He's in Detroit. Yeah. And he's going to see bands in high school. So one of the bands that he worships is the band called The Gorys. It's a three-piece band from Detroit. No bass. Female drummer. And doing kind of a garage rock blues hybrid like Neo, like in the 90s. So good. He said female on drums. Yeah. By the way, Black Singer. Black Singer. Yeah. Mick Collins. Shout out to Mick. Huge, great band. And they were huge for him. There was like a huge influence on young Jack White in his teen years. But last but not least, and what's cool about this is that he tells the story about seeing The Cramps, one of my favorite bands. And he talks about how the band that opened for them was this band called Flat Duo Jets. And that means that I saw that same tour that he did because I saw that same show in San Francisco. But that band is a duo, and they sound like this. This is Flat Duo Jets, another big influence on Jack White and the White Stripes. This is a live recording, and it's just drums and guitar, and it's the blues. And it's a two-piece band and drums and guitar and another big influence. And part of why this is important, as always on the show, the influences are not— That's two people. That's two people. It's never like a gotcha. It's more like, well, obviously, everyone forms their musical and aesthetic and creative vision out of some portions of things they liked and then some things they added that was their own individual artistic expression and storytelling. So the Flat Duo Jets were definitely an unsung hero of Jack White's life and career. I love that. And by the way, could an influence ever be bad? Like, yeah, not really. You know, not in this sense. But I think we live in an era and like, look, if you're a listener of this show, if this is your first episode, maybe this is new. Hey, if it's your first episode, welcome. Welcome. But longtime listeners know that we are the opposite of gatekeepers, both in terms of bands and knowledge, but also in terms of creativity. I want to counter the supposition that if you can notice something that you've heard elsewhere, that's a gotcha of some kind. It's not a gotcha of some kind. That's to be expected and to be celebrated to a certain degree. There's obviously a line to be crossed. There's nowhere near any lines crossed here. White Stripes are an incredibly unique combination of their influences plus their own personality. So today we're talking about Seven Nation Army and the massiveness of this song cannot be overstated. After the success of Fell in Love with a Girl and their next album, White Blood Cells, we arrive at this album, Elephant, and it just takes them to the next level. Absolutely. And the album was recorded in London at a studio called Toe Rag, which, as Jack White describes it, was sort of the mecca, the holy grail from the scene he was coming from in Detroit, the lo-fi the garage rock revivalist the reason why from afar this studio was so desirable yeah was because they had only analog gear it's all these classic microphones and outboard gear and compressors and eight track you know a board from the 60s in fact they didn't have any gear that was manufactured after 1963 crazy so and at the time this was sort of in the pre or right around the time maybe when the ebay era that old gear is starting to have value again in no small part because of bands like the White Stripes. But it's easy to forget that all the stuff the Beatles recorded on, which now is desirable, you want these multi-thousand dollar mics and compressors. At the time, they were just old gear. People didn't want it anymore. So you could get it for a song and there was only one studio you could record at that would have stuff like that, or a handful, at least I should say. So they do it at Toe Rag in London with Liam Watson, who's a bit of an unsung hero. I think he's credited on the record with mixing, perhaps a little engineering, but it's the band and Liam Watson in London making this record and making this song. And one more thing to talk about, this is in contrast to the digital revolution that's happening in real time, myself included. This is around the year that I'm like, I want to make songs. A four track on analog cassettes isn't working for me. I had a Tascam four track. It wasn't working for my brain. And then Pro Tools comes in with their entry level Digi 001 for $1,000. And that changed my life. And digital recording becomes a thing. And iTunes a few years later becomes a thing. This is all the digital music revolution moment. Not to mention MySpace, which is about to happen for promotion and everything a few years later. But prior to this, like you didn't have all those tools, but Jack White and Meg are going against the grain. They're like, well, we are going to go to a place that literally doesn't have a screen. There's no laptops, no computers. It's all this old analog gear because of the sound, the quality. And because it hearkened, the recordings that come out of it have this quality that connects them to these blues records like we were listening to, like the Sun House and like the King Oliver, like those classic records and frankly, even the Zeppelin stuff and the Dylan stuff. And it makes sense that they would have, you know, the resources, if you will, to go to their ideal studio overseas, because you've got to remember their first three albums came out on Sympathy for the record industry, very sort of by these standards, small label. But by this point, they're on V2 in the US and they're on Excel in the UK. So they have that ability. i'll also say as a person who was at a record label at that time there was like this push and pull about what kind of bands we should be signing and in the anr department it was like well the bands that are really selling are like sort of like you know these new rock bands you know in you rock bands we've talked about them on the show you know with the umlaut over the u yeah yeah there was that there was a lot of like we need more corn we need more no one's more confessional we need more and these and these garage rock bands these lo-fi bands were sort of seen as like ah that's the stuff for los angeles and and california like nobody else is really listening this is by by the time 2003 rolls along yeah you know you got to realize people aren't signing more yeah yes they aren't signing you know the vines sort of came and went you know and in some ways seven nation army to me is just a person who like i said had been sort of following them the whole way it was sort of like a triumphant comeback for the genre yeah uh because it is sort of falling into disfavor right at least with the record labels i totally agree with that the one thing i was sort of like you're making me question only is the term lo-fi because as i think about it especially the aesthetic of lo-fi is is kind of the opposite this this is a pretty hi-fi record totally because that means high fidelity right so the audio quality is sort of its own aesthetic maybe like guided by voices and sort of tape sounding stuff i will say lo-fi but i think what we were ultimately saying was analog like there was yes there was a difference between what they were doing uh lo-fi just became sort of a catch-all phrase for people who were trying to make records that did sound like they recorded in the 60s and 70s sounding records yeah ariel pink and all that as opposed to you know system of a down which doesn't sound like that i don't know what i don't know whose bedroom that sounds like that's not a bad system of a down is not in a I love it. By the way, I definitely want to do a System of the Down episode. Oh, hell yeah. All right, quick break. When we come back, we're going to show you how a song with just two people ends up sounding stadium-sized when we get back. Welcome back to One Song Luxury. Let's start with Meg White, the, I think, underrated Meg White on drums. Absolutely underrated. This is going to be a Meg White love fest here. Megan Martha White at the top of the song Utter simplicity across the board Let's listen And that's actually two tracks There's just the toms Her floor tom You can see her playing this live She's just going really wonderfully The word isn't dainty But there are characteristics to how she plays That are hard to put words to But they're unique and they're wonderful And she's playing the tom with one hand While the other hand is sort of like a little dainty I would say, but it's hard and dainty at the same time. So it's just the toms. And the other is the kick. In the multi-tracks, there is what's called a sub, which is the sub, as you would understand the word in like, you know, bass culture. It's the subwoofer. It's the lowest of the low. And I hear the kick drum in there, and that sounds like this. I mean, doesn't that just sound like you're like a baby in the womb? It's a very baby womb. Yes. Absolutely. That's like the original beat. Well, it's 124 BPM, so it's roughly a heartbeat. That's 100%. Yeah. 100%. And when you put them together, it gives the full thump. It's an icky thump. Oof, oof, boom, boom. It's so primal. Are you saying icky as a Vigipop? Like caveman. Uh-huh, yeah. Like it's just primal and like just stomping on the ground is like the birth of rhythm. I am org. Stomping on the ground at a heartbeat tempo is like the birthplace of human rhythm. So we get that at the top. Then she throws in the snare when we're halfway through the verse. You hear that big, loud snare. You hear the room. That's not a Fleetwood Mac snare. That's not like a disco, like tightly controlled, small snare sound. I mean, that doesn't even sound like that. Sounds like the snare is sitting in the back of the high school band room that you're just like a giant auditorium. Yeah, this will do. Yeah. You hear like a giant room there. an unsung hero of this song if not the band altogether is meg white's foot like that that thump is just giving unsung hero status to body parts now and then in the chorus she comes in with the crash now can i say something about this because my reaction is just that we said this on the jay dilla episode there's something about when it's a human doing it it always sounds like it's a little bit behind where it should be a little human and that imperfect wonderfully human is what makes it better one jillion percent so why is meg white amazing one because she serves the function her drumming serves the function of what the song meets yeah pure and simple and these songs like excel because of jack doing what he does and meg doing what she does now is what she's doing technically no is she neil peart you know is she whatever alex van hillen john bonham head it's true i am a period head we are definitely doing a rush episode note fans note rush fans my peer pronunciation not neil pert but she's not that this is not the way you should be assessing her skill based on paradiddles and 30 second notes and i'm a big fan of paradiddles but i will say this complexity is not everything no it's not and and just the fact that it isn't perfect makes it sound more raw i mean to hear jack white said he said in 2003 i think that his favorite white strikes album it was still their very first album because he likes that raw sound yeah and when you have drums that sound like this it's gonna bring the rock and i know what you mean when you say imperfect we're just talking about like it's not to the grid yeah it's not to the grid but to your earlier point it is perfect because it is human and because it's real and the musicality of it shines through all of the characteristics of the recording being the analog gear the performances like this is you really feel the realness of this band the authenticity of it and what's interesting is the diversity of music that i think you and me were liking at this time because dab punk is like literally to the grid like it's like the robots have taken control right and i loved it yeah and they were coming out with great music in 2001 discovery my favorite dab punk album comes out in 2001 at the same time meg white's sort of behind the beat drums or a little tom and kick also sounding perfect but not on the grid i completely agree but one thing about just because you mentioned dab punk one thing about the greats that are electronic is that they also include in the music because of the use of samples element the human element which is why it doesn't purely sound like a copy didn't paste to be you've got the break beat in there you've got the imperfect i listened to that punk homework recently and i was like there's flaming on the kick drum yes like the sampled kick and the other sam and the eight and the 909 don't perfectly align yes the imperfection there is an improvement on what might have been dead if it was gridded out perfectly wouldn't have been as good so there's only one guitarist on the song it's jack white There are no other phantom guitarists on this song. Jack White and Meg are the entirety of the song. And to me, it sounds like a bass. It sounds like a bass guitar. To everybody, it sounds like a bass guitar. It's not a bass guitar? It's not a bass guitar. It is Jack Gillis' K-Holo Body. He tells the story that he got it from a thrift store because he moved a refrigerator for them. And they said, here, take this crappy old guitar for free. So he took his K-Holo Body. I'm going to pick up my guitar here. So Jack White took his K-Holo Body from the thrift store. which would sound something like that, and took his Digitech whammy pedal. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that later when we get to the other guitar stuff But it has a setting on it This is a pedal which I don have I recreating with the software Is the Digitech pre No no no Digitech is more of a modern pedal Okay. And it has an occupied. So you had to steal it into the studio. Yeah. That's a fair point. Well, he wasn't a fascist about it, obviously, the 1963 thing. Antifa. He's Antifa. And I'll show you what it does. There's actually literally a pedal, and if you ever watch him play this song live, He flips the pedal after the verse into the chorus. So this is without the pedal. And then when you depress the pedal, it sounds like this. So I'll do that again. Here is the seventh-fretted E on the second string. But when I pitch it down an octave, we get that sound. It sounds like a bass guitar. It sounds like maybe a Dan Electro bass. It's very plucky. And he also up-plucks. He doesn't, not down-strokes, but up-strokes. So I'll play you the riff on the guitar, and then I'll depress the pedal and play it for you again an octave down. So this is what he plays. when you put the pedal down it goes down an octave and you get this awesome pretty neat trick right yeah and then you have a bass line in a band that famously doesn't have a bass player. That's right. You can stay with two people on stage. You think there were so many bassists who were like, ah, not him. Taking our jobs. Taking our jobs. This one band for this one song could have been millions of dollars. Could have been me. And by the way, technically, he also tunes the guitar to an open A. But that's the riff. That's the two-bar riff. The seven notes that run through the whole song. Now that I've played it, let's hear him play it. you can hear little reverb flaps in there i love that it's not the spring reverb in there i never noticed that before which is a guitar thing you almost never have reverb you know come you know spring reverb on a bass not never but rarely so by the way i counted and we hear this riff that seven note riff that two bar loop of seven notes 52 times across the song the only change happens when he goes to the three and then the four for the build-up section which is both a pre-chorus and a post-chorus you'll notice that we frame that middle section which is no vocals is framed by the same two-bar loop going into it and coming out of it and that sounds like this in the bass the three to the four the big build-up and then we're back to the one basically and then he mirrors the triplet a second time you know you said we only hear this 52 times only 52 times that's actually not that many times no not about times i'm thinking like you hear the word booty 16 times in bubba sparks his miss new booty every single chorus okay so you hear more how many courses are there? I think five. Five times 16? What's that? Nobody knows. 80? I think it's 80. All I'm saying is that there's more booty in Miss New Booty than there are this riff in Seven Nations. That's shocking to me. All I guess I'm saying is that repetition works. We're going to make some effort to figure out why this song is so iconic and why it may be the most recognizable riff currently on planet Earth. We're going to try and deconstruct it. I don't think we'll get to the bottom of it but if we can start making notes making a list well let's start the list with what you just said repetition repetition is at the top of the list and we're going to keep adding as we go it also has that thing that like is in blur song two and uh so many songs the quiet loud thing it's got that thing that we we trace back to the pixies at least by the way the internet doing what the internet does uh you know people have found this piece of music from the 1800s anton bruckner's symphony number five which does sound like that iconic riff let's play a little bit of it you know that sounds a little similar to me that sounds crazy yeah you know it's similar about it to me a handful of things one is obviously the notes yeah there's also there's a triplet in there it's a little swingier yeah it's got more of a more almost almost a waltz it's got a swing to it more of a swing but it is a triple a and it's obviously the same notes it's harmonized a little differently yeah but also the repetition of it and the fact that it's you know crescendoing like it's getting louder and louder by the way if this story is true i love the fact that he was able to pluck something from the freaking 1800s which he may have been subconsciously doing i I don't think he necessarily remembered. And certainly in the telling, he often talks about how he was in Australia at a sound check and he came up with this riff. And he played it for a friend of his who was there. And the guy was like, it's fine. They didn't think much of it, but they kept on going. But it's possible that deep in the recesses of his subconscious, he had heard this. Absolutely. And to be clear, this would, by an 1876 Fifth Symphony of Anton Bruckner, would be out of copyright technically. Oh, I was going to say. It would be public domain. Yes, to all of those aspiring musicians out there. Most of that classical stuff from 200, 300 years ago, that's all public domain. So you don't have to try and find somebody in Belgium. Yeah, but be careful because there are examples of classical music like – Eric Carman famously thought Rachmaninoff was out of copyright when he wrote this. But he was wrong and had to pay the price, give up some of the copyright. But an 1876 composition in 2003 would have been out of copyright. Absolutely. I think that's just genius what he was able to make that guitar do. What else is he doing with the guitar in this song? So he's also using the guitar in the chorus. We hear him switch. And if you ever watch footage of it, you'll see him use that whammy bar I was just talking about. He undoes the octave down, the bass pedal, so he's back to the regular register of the guitar. He adds some distortion. So he does a little switcheroo with his pedal station. He takes off the octavizer and goes back to the regular guitar register. Sounds like a guitar. And then he adds the electro harmonics big muff, which is a very 60s, early 70s sounding, kind of a grunge sounding fuzz pedal. And we hear this. Oh, and he's got a slide on his finger too. So you're hearing that. You really hear the slide here. I don't know why, like when that guitar comes up, it both sounds like empowering, like, yeah, but it also feels like evil. Like it feels like, you know, some demon is now rising above a stadium somewhere. I mean, I think we have some association with the blues. First of all, the blues, the pentatonic scale, et cetera. and also the fact of it being a slide guitar is extremely blues right and we kind of have this robert johnson association stories and thing might be in the back of my stories and songs about the devil i think that's all in the mix there those associations that we would have from what these things that we have heard before in different contexts are going to conjure those images wicker man like coming up and like it just you know what i mean it feels like something's emerging something's rising yeah because we did the loud the quiet loud thing we went from as you the pixies nirvana that 90s kind of construction he's doing that in here i think that's another thing on the checklist right of why this song is so powerful as we were so powerful and even though there are only two people on i think that's why it sounds stadium big because what he's doing with his instruments is you know create it's evoking all these like you know vague images in our head in our psyche you know that you can't hear that guitar without hearing something now rising and And, you know, coming, I think that's why it's popular in games and stadiums, because it's like, here we are, defeat us. Here we are now, entertain us. Love that part so much. Let's talk about the solo. Let's talk about the solo. So what we just played for you was an overdub. So live, Jack White switches from the riff to what we just heard, to the crunchier riff with the blues. And you're getting some more notes in there, you're getting some chords in there, which is kind of cool because the bass drops out. And then he does it a third time with a third layer when he gets to the solo. The solo, which I'm about to play for you, which sounds amazing and is unhinged. Think about how he's playing this live, and then we'll play that for you after. It's so real sounding. This kind of harkens back to, now obviously he's a big Led Zeppelin fan, as that quote from earlier. It sounds like Hendrix to me. It's a Hendrix. To me, it's Hendrix through Page. the lineage to me at least sounds like i hear hendrix as page would interpret it jimmy page from led zeppelin sure as jack white is interpreting it because down to the fact that some of the notes are a little bit like missed like there's inaccuracy so to speak oh yeah by the way inaccuracy i'd never heard until you just play the sims just now i never heard right some of those notes i think i corrected them in my head because there were other things going on yeah and just like this is a common thing we talk about on the show this just to my ears it's just speculation but knowing how Jack White is and knowing that they set things up to be analog and they moved really quickly. And one of the goals there was to capture spontaneity. And one of the goals of capturing spontaneity is to not overthink and not overly perfect. Like our parody song at the top of this episode. I'm not hearing a lot of punching in. I'm not hearing any punching in. I think he played that. He's like, look, I missed a note or two, but it sounded really human. And to sort of back that up, I call attention to the fact that he's a big Willie Nelson fan. And he's gone on record talking about how he always tells people to go google willie nelson guitar solos and when you go listen to willie nelson guitar solos there's some great clips on youtube he's doing kind of a similar thing where it's energy it's emotional it's kind of raucous and chaotic and some of the notes are quote-unquote not in the scale of what the chord is in that moment yeah but your ear not only forgives it it's exciting it's exciting that it's a little bit wrong and you're like what's happening so it's it's this layer of chaos that comes back to control at the very end when he turns off the pedal and we're right back to the riff yeah that solo makes me wish i knew how to play guitar yeah because i can only imagine like looking out over a you know field of people and playing something that sounds that you know exciting yeah exciting insane, evil, perfect. Well, now we come to the vocals and the lyrics. It's easy to forget how good of a singer Jack White is until you try and do a parody song. And then you're like, oh man, this is not, this is not an easy person to imitate. He's got a unique voice, very unique voice. And he pushes it to the hilt. I also love the lyrics of this song. You know, like let's just start from the top. I'm going to fight them all. I said the nation army couldn't hold me back. they're gonna rip it off taking their time right behind my back now he said this song is about gossip and how he just didn't like how people were this is about the time yeah by the way that all of the rumors that he had actually put out yeah about him and meg being you know siblings and you know all that stuff was falling apart i think it was a an interview in 2001 or 2002 that the truth finally came out and they found the marriage license and all this so all that was sort of stuff was falling away and you know everything that he had tried to sort of hide behind the monochromatic scheme yeah and the the fake backstory it was all coming out all the obfuscation all the obfuscated all the obfuscation it was all it was all coming out and so he was just like sick of it he was sick of all the gossip all the rumors don't want to hear about it and all the things all the shit so to speak that comes with being a big person in the music industry I think that's really incredible But I also just Again I always think about the year I remember when I heard Seven Nation Army couldn't hold me back We were going to war with Iraq And I thought that was actually A reference to Our coalition Our coalition was much smaller in 2003 Than it had been during the Gulf War In the 90s Because we were saying they had weapons of mass destruction And there was all this talk about Not as small as it is now But you know like back then it was like a big deal that we couldn't build this broad-based coalition to attack Iraq again. But to hear Jag tell it, the Seven Nation Army is just what he would call the Salvation Army. So it was a very distinctly personal. Yeah, that was like a childhood. That's what he misheard the Salvation Army as, the Seven Nation Army. So he brought that back in. There's a lot in the lyrics that have probably connection to these. I agree. I think he's referred to these moments in his life in these situations. And I also think there's a lot of lyrics that just something rhymed with something else and jumped out to him in the moment he was composing them. He just from the Queen of England to the Hounds of Hell, you know, might have just jumped into his head a little bit. The Hounds of Hell stuff, another blues tradition kind of box of words that you kind of reach into. Really cool. From the Queen of England to the Hounds of Hell. But that's a very evocative. That's from another era is what I mean. That's that's a line that's feels blues and maybe blues through the 60s. There's a little bit of Robert Plant in the Hounds of Hell kind of line as well. So it's all in there. Robert Johnson to Robert Plant to Jack White. All the Roberts. Even Robert Dylan. Bobby Zimmerman. Totally agree. And like there's some interesting moments. You know, sometimes we have shows that go back to back or that are nearby each other. We talked about how in Billie Jean there is a six to a five and then there's a borrowed note in the dominant five. It actually happens again in this song. So here it is. This is the Billie Jean moment. And we go dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, six, five. The five is the dominant. Go back and listen to our Michael Jackson, Billie Jean. Please do. Similar thing where there's a note that's not in the chord of the rest of the song that shows up in the dominant fifth, because that's what happens a lot of times with dominant fifths. Here it is. I'll point it out to you. And I'm talking to myself at night because I can't forget. That note, can't forget. It jumps out a little bit because we haven't heard it anywhere else in the song. And it's very gratifying. It a major note in a minor otherwise minor chord And I say minor chord but he really just playing roots There a lot of implied notes and implied tonality and space But that note to my ear at least, really jumps out and is exciting sounding because it's major and the rest of the song is kind of an implied minor key. So I'll play it again and just listen for that note. I think it jumps out to a lot of people's ears and maybe that's the reason. And I'm talking to myself at night Because I can't forget It's a leading tone. You want to get right back to the drug. It needs to go back to the one there. Yeah. Doesn't he kind of do it in the next one too on Cigarette? Yep. Back and forth through my mind Behind a cigarette Actually, he doesn't do it there. But I think when I was singing it or hearing it in my head, you thought it was there. Well, let's listen again. Back and forth through my mind Behind a cigarette if anything he's kind of implying the flatted version of that note the not major one the minor version i had always heard the cigarette blues music part of the magic of the blues and it's an un you can never deconstruct it and get to everything and explain it perfectly but one of the things go back to our don pen no no no episode we've talked about blues a lot in this past year but the major and minor the simultaneity and jimmy hendrix episode sinners right the simultaneity of major and minor is a part of the hauntingness of a lot of blues music that you'll have some minorness and then there'll be a little major moment or vice versa i'll just say for my own purposes uh i feel like i've learned so much about this song listening to the stems because there are notes that i thought were there that aren't there me too we just discovered that yeah that is really weird and it just tells you again that like in our head we're i want to use the word correctly but it's not that we're making it right it's just that we're doing to the song what we think should be there. Totally. Well, let's get back to our list, too, of like reasons why we think may have contributed to this song being the massive song that it is. One other unusual thing is I just played the verse and there are no vocals in the chorus. So we heard the chorus already. We have to sort of jump over back to get to more vocals. Can I talk about my favorite verse? My favorite verse is verse number three. It has one of the single greatest lines of lyrics that I've ever heard. And it comes right at the beginning. Can we hear it? Stop it. We all love Wichita. We love the Wichita line. Why is it so gratifying? Well, you get so specific. Yeah, yeah. For no freaking reason. I mean, there's a little bit of a reason here, but like it's so specific. I'm going to Wichita. Like, you're just like, why? What? You could have ended the song there and I would have been like, this is the greatest song ever. Fight me because I think that's not the best lyric. I think the best lyric is the one that comes next. Okay, let's hear it. The reason why we're going to Wichita. Far from this opera forevermore. The opera. we're getting far from the opera in wichita i think wichita wins it oh no i think wichita is wichita kansas there's a lot of talk about bleeding and dripping in this thing so like he's it's on the motif he's basically saying hey i'm leaving this music business i think he's saying i'm leaving the music business i'm going to wichita kansas i'm going to you know like these are fighting words these are this is a man who you know and another time would have had a gun slung on his side. Let's listen to Wichita. Let's listen to why he's going to Wichita, what he's going to do there. Powerful stuff. Wichita, Kansas, bleeding Kansas. A lot of blood in here. I love the idea that words are bleeding from his brain and then he will think no more. So his thoughts are his blood. Oh, come on, man. This is genius. That motherfucker wrote a song. This is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful tune. I mean, like, there are people who, like, great directors are good at this, too. Like, movie directors. Like, they can take something so specific and simple and short, and they can make it just – it tells a whole story just in itself. I'm going to Wichita. That's the first 30 minutes of the movie. It's a whole opera. It's a whole opera. It's a whole opera. All right, so I'm so curious about this. We always talk about publishing and the splits. We know that Jack White is a big force in this band. How did the splits break down? 100%, John Anthony White is the publishing split for this song. The absence of a split, I would say. This is a split list song. He gets 100% of the publishing royalties. But Meg is getting the performance, the master. Meg's money would be coming from, ideally, they signed a recording contract where they got some money from the master sales you know eventually people tend to not always they have to recoup their advance a lot of times these videos get rid of you know push you back in the recoupment process right but then all the touring steps you'd make money from that of course i did i i would imagine jack white's a swell dude i'm sure he cut her into something he cut her out somewhere along the way but nothing from the publishing of this song at least okay so diallo what do you think the legacy of the song seven nation army is i mean this is one of those songs look the west stripes have had an incredibly successful career you know this is off of their fourth album so like you know they were no slouches they had other songs blue orchid is a great song like they have other great songs i will say as a person who followed them you know uniformly up till this point in their career like this to me feels like a peak of some sort yeah you know they have a great catalog of songs they're fine but this song in particular like you know it's just it's just taken on a whole life of its own in the world of football or as crazy we call it soccer and i think it was a belgium crowd that was the first to sort of sing oh during a 2003 game when this song is brand new and then over time it got added to fifa and to video games and now it's just assumed that like you know when you go to sporting events crowd is gonna chant oh it's incredible it's in the pantheon along with we will rock you yes and dun dun dun dun dun for songs you hear in stadiums it's a very small catalog exactly i love that you brought up the dun dun dun there's a story that uh jack shared about uh seven nation army becoming an anthem he was on conan and they talked about this one time when they uh went to a dodgers game together and you know the song was playing the stadium you know what we'll let them say it for themselves check out this clip from that conversation Is that weird for you to hear your music in arenas like that? People come up to me all the time and they think it makes me mad for some reason. I don't know why they think it upsets me, but I think it's the most, as a songwriter, that's the greatest thing that could ever happen. It becomes folk music because people take it over. And I don't know of that many songs where they're not saying words, they're chanting a melody. Yes. So as a songwriter, that's pretty unbelievable that connected with people in that way. It's just a guttural feeling for them. As we were discussing earlier, this is Jack in his peak Michael Jackson era. Totally. I mean, like, he looks so cool. But I think that's true. I think everything he said is true. Like, people always assume that if you have such mainstream success as this, you're somehow going to be the pissed off, you know, artist. I mean, like, it happens so organically. It's not like, you know, Folgers Coffee presents, you know, the Seven Nation Army Anthem at your local game. Like, no, this is something people picked up on their own. And I love what he's saying about it being like it's like folk music now. It's coming full circle from his own tradition with folk and blues, blues being a form of folk music. Bringing in evoking folk music and people for the folks. Right. I think that totally works. And by the way, from its Brucknerian, its classical origins, right? I mean, if there is a public domain, a collective, this is a shared melody thing, it's kind of going back to being a shared melody again. Absolutely. I think the only person who could possibly be angry is the Anton Bruckner estate. What do you think the legacy of the Seven Nation Army is? As we're talking about it, I'm just like, we've been kind of culling reasons why it might have become so iconic. And we'll never get to the bottom of it. But so far, we said, we talked about the repetition. We hear the seven notes 52 times. We have the quiet, loud dynamic, which is exciting. We have its hummability. It's not singability, interestingly. It's hummability. But it's sort of an easy, you know, crowd-pleasing anthem. It's anthemic. Maybe that's what I'm looking for. And everybody says, you know, whether they say, oh, oh, oh. I think I heard that the Italians say po, po, po, po, po. It's the po, po song. Jack White himself has talked about his own theory, which he thinks it's related to how music in general rewards this dance between the expected and the unexpected. So when he's talked about, he's narrowed it down to within the riff, he thinks the dun, dun, dun makes you think we're going up. Dun, dun, dun. So there's something satisfying about like, oh, there's a surprise, there's a pivot there. And then the second moment in the song. Sounds like a triangle. It's like dun, dun, dun, dun. It feels like a triangle. Yeah. And then the second moment in the song, Jack White himself thinks might be contributing to its iconicness. Is that final half step? Dun, dun, dun. Because that's very eerie. Yeah, it sounds eerie. From the flat six to the five is very eerie. It's very evocative of like, it's sort of dirgy, like there's something funereal about it, almost very bluesy. That's his theory. So add that to the quiet, loud, to the repetition. And then one last thing. Oh, it's elemental. The primal, the thud. meg's foot right first very hard when you're in the womb it's the 124 it's the heartbeat tempo and one last thing as we were listening just now i was noticing the chorus is both a reduction and an emphasis in other words it's the riff we've already been hearing but like something is added to it and then taken away which like if you have something that's just repeated the whole time that's already the 52 times of the riff is enough but then when you kind of emphasize it by adding the crunchy guitar on top and then you take that away it's you're having a sameness and a change simultaneously the riff is still happening but it's a it's it's got more flavors to it it's like the sandwich has more like sand you know layers added to the middle dagwood sandwich in a blondie comics yeah it's like the dagwood sandwich back to a regular sandwich look we could keep on adding things to the list of why it's iconic and never quite solve it and never solve it and never solve it music but that's to me the legacy of this like song as a songwriter is like, how do you make something like this? And the answer is you can't. You just get lucky. When he wrote it, his buddy was like, eh, right? So you may never know if you have the next Seven Nation Army. Don't listen to your buddies. That's the lesson. Don't listen to your buddies. And it's also a reminder, Jack White as a living legend, right, is a reminder of just like, it's not just integrity for integrity's sake. In fact, there's something about him coming from the scene. And I came from a scene too. We talked about scenes on the Fall Out Boy episode. there can be something kind of toxic about scenes where there's a set of, there's an orthodoxy Detroit scene kind of turns against Jack. Yes. There's rules that if you don't follow them, you're kind of outcast from it and success is what it is. Well, success is one of the biggest no-nos you can possibly have. So I think what Jack White didn't set out to like necessarily swing for the fences. And that's not a bad thing. Fallout boy did listen to that episode. That can be wonderful and have integrity as well. His integrity is that he's a visionary. that's literally just doing what drives him and what he wants to hear. And he's making stuff both sonically and songwritingly and bands. He has multiple bands, the Rock Contours, the Dead Weather. He's got his solo project now. And now he's gone from yellow to red to blue. Blue is the Jack White solo color. All of this is his vision and his integrity and his art. And he's like a living artist. He's only 50. And he's just like created so much. It's really inspiring. And he's got so far to go. He's got so much more in him, I know. All right, Diallo, it's time for one more song, the segment where we share a deep cut or hidden gem with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other. Do you want to go first? I would love to go first This song came on my radar I really really love it I may butcher the pronunciation of it The song is called Otoma da Naba Otoma da Naba And it's by this artist Florence Aduni I believe I'm pronouncing her name right She's from Ghana She's making this really infectious Music that is less Afro beats And more Afro beat More in the style of Fela Kuti But because of its tempo I love mixing it into my house music sets. So let's listen to a little bit of Atoma da Naba by Florence Aduni. Florence Aduni. It's a four-minute explosion of just amazing vibes. It's infectious joy. I love it. I love it so much. This is off of a single that's called A Song, and that's a good song. She's got a bunch of music out there. Again, Florence Aduni, A-D-O-O-N-I. She is Kumasi from Ghana, and it's just a really cool song. I would say check out her whole catalog. That's my one more song for today. Luxury, what is your song? Well, I've been on a death rock kick recently, going deeper into my goth roots. This is a tune from a band out of Japan called Faidia. I think I'm pronouncing that right. and they are a Japanese death rock slash goth band. This is from 1985. It's Dead End Love. I'm just so into that right now. That's the exact sound I want. We've seen two very drivey songs. It's driving. It's what to listen to when you're driving at night, 10 to midnight on a Friday night listening to KCRW. I have been playing that song. I like that a lot. as always if you have an idea for one more song maybe you have what you think should be one of our one more songs uh you can find us on instagram uh you can dm us let us know uh as always you can find me on instagram at diallo d-i-a-l-o and on tiktok at diallo riddle you can find me on instagram at l-u-x-x-u-r-y and on tiktok at luxury xx and you can follow our podcast on instagram and tiktok just follow it at one song podcast for exclusive content you can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube. Just search for One Song Podcast. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. And be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, you've officially joined the One Song Nation. That's right. Show us some love, give us five stars, leave a review, and send this episode to your fellow music nerd. It really helps keep the show going. All right, Luxury, help us in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist, and every Friday from 10 till midnight, KCRW DJ Luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And this is one song we will see you next time. This episode was produced by Melissa Duanez. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Mixing by Michael Hartman and engineering by Eric Hicks. This show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Spiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wall, and Leslie Guam.