THE WHITE STRIPES GREATEST HITS revisits the meteoric rise of one of the most influential bands in modern rock. We’ve got it here at Horizon Records on CD & 2xLP, and in our webstore! Buy it HERE.
In 1997 JACK & MEG WHITE climbed into the third floor attic of their Southwest Detroit homestead and bashed out a primitive cover of David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream.” In an alternate reality, it’s all they ever do musically. The brother leads a spartan life as a dutiful upholsterer and the sister finishes culinary school and continues to make heartwarming food.
But that doesn’t happen. Something sparks in both of them. As THE WHITE STRIPES, they take their simple guitar-drums-voice approach to a local open mic night on 
Bastille Day. The performance was just good enough to keep them going. In what feels like a whirlwind, they record and release two 7-inch singles for a local indie label. A not-so-local indie offers to put out a full length album.
They start touring. Another album. More touring. Another album. Folks REALLY start to pay attention. CRAZY touring. More albums, accolades, wildest dream after wildest dream coming true. “World-renowned” becomes an appropriate descriptor as does “long-building overnight sensation.”
It wasn’t such a long career to span: six studio albums released between 1999 and 2007. Yet the duo stuffed those eight years full of 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXlULkwhgrc
THE WHITE STRIPES GREATEST HITS draws from each category, demonstrating the breadth—and also the depth—of the band’s catalog. Fittingly, for a group inscrutable enough that its members always claimed to be siblings rather than the divorced couple they are, this best-of compilation doesn’t conform to the usual conventions. The tracks aren’t chronological, and if they’re grouped thematically, the themes aren’t self-evident.
The lack of an obvious organizational principle doesn’t mean the tracklisting is haphazard. Rather, skipping back and forth among albums and sounds 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.
The essentials are all here, from “Seven Nation Army” to “Hello Operator,” “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” to “Hotel Yorba” to “Ball and a Biscuit,” which Jack White revisited in October as part of a tempestuous medley on Saturday Night Live. The White Stripes’ 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.
Algorithms and the instant availability of huge amounts of music on digital streaming platforms have largely superseded the usefulness of greatest hits albums, which 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, but this collection also documents an influential piece of the indie-rock revival of the early 2000s, when 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. These 26 songs are 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.
Pick up a copy of THE WHITE STRIPES GREATEST HITS today at Horizon Records or in our webstore, and check out these other White Stripes titles, too!
