The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army"

[music] We're gonna talk about it In a single comment 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 stadium We've already come to have heard this song And once we break it down, and pray this ends, 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 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 has this whole second life as a universal stadium chair I mean, this might be the most famous riff of the 21st century [humming] If you haven't guessed it yet, we're talking one song And that song is "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes And a message coming from my eyes is leaving it on I'm actor-writer-director, and sometimes DJ, the Ella Riddle And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, Luxury AKA the guy who ispers, interpolation 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 Alright, so today we're talking "Seven Nation Army" By The White Stripes When we first started talking about "Do This Podcast" It's on our short list, I don't know why it's taken 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 not like, I definitely introduced her But she might have introduced it to me Start a fight with your ex, that's funny And the song was from DeSteel, the second record It's pretty good looking at her girl As I say that out loud, she feels like something a guy would introduce to a girl But maybe she introduced it to me I don't know Are, if you're out there listening, are 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 In the 90s music That was throwback, that was 60s, it felt low-fi You 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 Black, white and red Black, red would have done it 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 low-fi movement Yeah, we're gonna talk about it Garage rock Yeah, I mean the revival, if you will Yeah, maybe it's just a revival of bands Like the hypes we're talking about, the white stripes Maybe the strokes are in there, the yeah, yeah, yeah Maybe it's just better national 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 I put the actually weird laugh because it might have been the revival of the word the it was the the revival It was the the revival which by the way is part of the whole 60s like vibe Remember what we did our segment about that garage rock record nuggets about all the 60s band You look at the liner notes every single band is a the the strawberry And I talked about the seeds The Venus 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 have a jacket that you may have seen on my um cover right there With the hard on it my good friend Yani like made that for me she was a stylist And we had videos for every song 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 to he understands the value of maybe branding you want to call it It's also interesting because this is around the time when I'm professionally DJ You know I'm out of college in 2000 and I'm professionally DJ 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 gonna form a band because I was like there should be a band called the Malabites And my theory was the Malabites I was like Malibu is such a I just moved to California and I was like Malibu is such a unique neighborhood I was like I wish I knew I'm basically forming my head a band. I knew I couldn't really be a member of Because I would have been authentic like the Malibu But I thought there should have been like a band that had the low five 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 surf rock meets garage rock Right, but sort of package like the strokes. I was like I even because I'm working as an intern at a record label at the time Hollywood record shout out to Hollywood records So a New York visual like a 70s CBGB Yeah, I'm going around visual but surf from Malibu Malibu and I was going to name them the Malabites and I sort of saw myself as Brian Epstein Okay, the last name Epstein has really been ruined You know what baby Brian Epstein Brian Epstein is the guy who sort of packed the beetles Right And I thought man, I'm going to be like Brian and pack I'm going to find some guys in Malibu play a visionary I'm going to put them together. I'm going to call them Malabites. This is Diallo at the record label as an ANR assistant Right, unfortunately I never found the group you couldn't find the Malabites never happened We can change music man. You could have been the Malcolm McLaren of surf rock meets New York aesthetic What about you Diallo where the white stripes already on your radar when seven nation army came out in 2003? Like a hundred percent and I think that it's one of those things where It's like perspective matters like it's like the same way when Snoop came out with dropping 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. I was hanging out with a with a female DJ at the standard. I probably thought she was kind of cute. I remember we went back to her apartment And it wasn't a date. I thought it was a date. She just wanted to play me records There was something could get the kitchen. It might have been drug related I realized 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. Yeah, and one was the first album just the white stripes. That's their debut album, epinemously Yes, exactly and it had a great it had a just a great vibe. I was really into it and On that one I think my favorite song was St. James and Firmary St. James and Firmary by the way just one of these really ancient songs. It's a folk song It's a it's a folk jazz blues standard. It has put no owner so to speak right? Yeah, lost the time at least I think you know Louis Armstrong is usually credited for making it really popular Jack White says that he actually discovered this song by watching Betty Boop cartoon from a long time ago But it's really old song in 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 It's so like King Oliver and his orchestra 1930 You know like these are like the oldest of jazz recordings. 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, it's with the second line, right? That's the first part that's slow and George like And they've got like atmospheric 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 I was talking about the full package of what music is is not simply the notes It's everything else surrounding it's a recording the look the the packaging if you will There's something spooky about Jack White's aesthetic you know with the jet black hair that hangs down the sides And sometimes he has like a Michael Jackson kind of power like there was a moment where he was in a little bit of an MJ thing in there. It's very mysterious white like the 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 heart 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 the 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 where yellow, he would he had a yellow van that he would show up at your house and pick up your old furniture to re-upholstery. This sounds like some black phone stuff for that movie, but what sounds spooky? Like you show them a yellow van, yellow paper, I'd be like, we'll call the cops. Don't let them in your house. That's the aesthetic thing and there's also something almost borderline on the nose about upholstery. You take something old, right? And you refer to 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. And he already has the aesthetic thing and he already has the two piece thing going on. Yeah. This is 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. And that's the sort of musical formative years already has refurbishing old stuff and color and two pieces. Yeah, it's interesting. You move from yellow to red and get 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, you know, making some of their earliest music together. I find that really interesting because when I when they first came on my radar after, you know, 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, you know, 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 is 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 low five music. And I guess that the red came in because Meg was a big fan of peppermint. She loves 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 peppermint. Why don't we paint that on your drum kit and see he did that. Yeah. Like mastermind. Like he's not hiring. He's not farming out the word. No. I love that he himself is the craftsman behind all of that stuff. He's always been sort of an arbiter of cool. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just a cool guy. So they were talking about their song, Seven Nation Army. Just to bring it back to the blues because Jack White's influence is, 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 in your face. 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 the story's not clapping that you, I got, I know what the tempo is. Yeah. And that clap is basically a beat. Yeah. Because singing is impeccable. And the notes are blues. This is the very 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 to the fact of it being this really old recording. I love how cynical and angry it is. It's like, those mind people grinning in your face. Yeah. No, it's the storytelling. I'm, 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 Egean 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, the real legit blues singers. They include the next wave, the Led Zeppelin's, et cetera. And obviously the Velvet Underground is in there. We're talking about Motuck or when we get into the drums a little bit later. Going back to the colors for a second, he has a, there's just a really great interview with workgroup. And I should say, like, go back and listen to it on Broken Rockard. I don'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 they're being a two piece. And one of them being make 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? 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 me and my family, like to me, the white stripes were a cartoon. Yeah. It had the simple color scheme. Almost like child. There's a child like quality. A child like quality. We're looking at 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 yoga, but gaba, yeah, or so many other things that come in like, you know, candy colors. Yeah. Literally talking about peppermint here. You're not going to throw tomatoes at that because you just get the sense, not always it probably an art project, but if you also bought the idea that this was brother and sister out of the, you know, woods of Tennessee somewhere, well, you're just not going to hold them to the same standard. If you show them, 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 I think 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. A lot, 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 seeking the blues recordings that he adored. And we speak of innocence. And think about their music video for fell in love with the 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, 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, and he's going to see bands in high school. So one of the bands that he worships is the band called the Goris. 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. He said, female androms. Yeah. By the way, black singer. Black singer. Yeah. You're calling. Shout out to Mick. Huge. That's fun. I'm 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. And 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? Not really. Not in this sense. But I think we live in an era, and if you're a listener of this show, this is your first episode. Maybe this is news. 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. Yeah. It's not a gotcha of some kind of-- 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 "Sevenation Army" and the massiveness of this song cannot be overstated. After the success of "Fell in Love with the Girl" and their next album, "My Blood Cells," we arrive at this album, "Elephant," and it just takes them to the next level. Absolutely. was recorded in London at a studio called Tohrag, which as Jack White described it was sort of the mecca, the Holy Grail, from the scene he was coming from in Detroit, the Lofi, the garage rock revivalist. The reason why from afar this studio was so desirable was because they had only analog gear. It's all these classic microphones and outward gear and compressors, eight track, you know, a board from the '60s. In fact, they didn't have any gear that was manufactured after 1963. Crazy. 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, you know, 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. But 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 foretrack on analog cassettes. Isn't working for me. I had a taskam foretrack. He wasn't working for my brain and then Pro Tools comes in with their entry level Digi001 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 my space, 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 harkened the recordings that come out of it, have this quality that connects them to these blues records like we were listening to, like the Sunhouse 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 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. Yeah. 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 A&R 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 Umilata over the year. Yeah. There was that. There was a lot of like, we need more corn. We need more cash and more confessional. We need more. And these garage rock bands, these low five bands were sort of seen as like, ah, that's the stuff for Los Angeles and California. Like nobody else is really listening. This is by the time 2003 rolls along, you know, you got to realize people aren't signing more. Yeah, yeah. As 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. Because it is sort of falling into disfavorable, at least with the record labels. I totally agree with that. The one thing I would sort of like, you're making me question only is the term low five. Because as I think about it, especially the aesthetic of low five is kind of the opposite. This is a pretty high five record totally because that means high fidelity. I know. The quality is sort of its own aesthetic, maybe like guided by voices and sort of tape sounding stuff. I will say low five. But I think what we were ultimately saying was analog. Like there was a difference between what they were doing. Low five just became sort of a catch all phrase for people who were trying to make records that didn't sound like they recorded in the same sounding records, 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 who's bedroom that sounds like. That's not a bad sound. The down is not in the bedroom. I love it. 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 I saw it with just two people in the sounding stadium size when we get back. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupie setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all day comfy grip, no tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just plum, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. 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 time. You can see her playing this live. She's just going really wonderfully, the word isn't dainty, but there's a, 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 was saying, 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, base culture. It's the subwoofer. It's the lowest below. 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 though? It's a very, it's a very baby womb. Absolutely. That's like the original beat. Well, it's 124 BPM. So it's roughly a heartbeat, 100%, 100%. 100%. And when you put them together, it gives the full thumb, it's an icky thumb, boom, boom, boom. It's so primal. It's so like cave, like caveman, like it's just primal and like, like just stomping on the ground is like the birth of rhythm, I am or 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, you know, in a giant room, 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 thumb is just heavy. We're giving unsung heroes 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 Dill 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. It's a little human. And professionally human is what makes it better, what Jillian percent. So why is Meg White amazing one because she serves the function, her drumming serves the function of what the song needs, 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, is she Neil Peert, you know, is she whatever, Alex Van Halen. John Connerhead. It's true. I am a Peert head. Definitely doing a rush episode, note fans, note rush fans, my peer pronunciation, not Neil Peert. But she's not that. This is not the way you should be assessing her skill based on paradiddles and 30 second notes. I'm a big fan of paradiddles, but I will say this complexity is not everything. No, it's not. 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 striped album was still their very first album because he likes that raw sound. Yeah. And when you have drums to sound like this, it's going to bring the raw. And I know what you mean when you say imperfect, we're just talking about like it's not to the grid. Yes, 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 that 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 2000 with discovery. My favorite dad 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, half punk. One thing about the greats that are electronic is that they also include in the music because of use of samples. The human element, which is why it doesn't purely sound like a copied and paste beat. 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 flamming on the kick drum. Yes. Like the sampled kick and the other stamp and the eight and the 909 don't perfectly align. Yes. If the imperfection there is an improvement on what might have been dead if it was grid out perfectly. Wouldn't have been as good. So there's only one guitarist on the song. It's Jack White. Jack White. Jack White. Jack White and Meg are the entirety of the song. And to me it sounds like a bass. Right. It sounds like a bass guitar. To everybody it sounds like a bass guitar. It's not a bass guitar. Jack Gillis's "K Hollow 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 Hollow Body." I'm going to pick up my guitar here. So Jack White took his "K Hollow Body" from the thrift store, which would sound something like that, and took his "digitec 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't have. I'm recreating with the software plugin. Is the "digitec pre-1963?" No, no, no. The "digitec" is more of a modern pedal. Okay. And it has -- So you have a stealin' 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 the 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-fredded E on the second string. But when I pitch it down and octave, we get that sound. It sounds like maybe a Dan Electro bass. It's very plucky. And he also up plugs. 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 and octave down. So this is what he plays. When you put the pedal down, it goes down and octave, and you get this. Pretty neat trick, right? Yeah. And then you get 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. This one band. This one band for this one song could have been millions of dollars. And by the way, technically, he also tunes the guitar to and 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 a little reverb flaps in there. It's not the spring reverb in there. I never noticed that before, which is a guitar thing. You almost never have 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 many mirrors the triplet a second time. You know, we only hear this 52 times. Only 52 times. That's actually not that many times. No, not many times. I'm thinking like, you hear the weird booty 16 times and Bubba Sparks is miss new booty every single chorus. So you hear more booty. How many parts is out there? I think five. Five times 16. What's that? Nobody notes 80? I think it's 80. All I'm saying is that there's more booty and miss new booty than there are this riff and seven nation. That's shocking to me. Oh, I guess I'm saying is the 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, let's start the list with what you just had. Repetition is at the top of the list. And we're going to keep adding as we go. It also has that thing that is in Blursong 2 and so many songs. The quiet loud thing? It's got that thing that we trace back to the pixies at least. By the way, the internet doing what the internet does, people have found this piece of music from the 1800s, Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 5, 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. There's also there's a triplet in there. It's a little swingier. It's got more of a, almost jadal. It's got a swing to it. More of a swing, but it is a triplet. And it's obviously the same notes. It's harmonized a little differently. 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 don't think he necessarily remembered. And certainly in the telling, he often talks about how he was in Australia to 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. I mean, 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 1876, fifth symphony of Anton Brookner would be out of copyright technique. Oh, I was going to be public domain. Yes. To all 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 like try and find somebody in Belgium. Yeah. But careful because there are examples of classical music like Eric Carmen famously thought rock man and off was out of copyright when he wrote this. But he was wrong and had to pay the price and give up some of the copyright. But in 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 the 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. Yeah, 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 electroharmonic's big muff, which is a very 60s early 70s sounding kind of a grand 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 have this live 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 things might be in the back of my head 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 the images like coming up in 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 said, 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. It's so powerful. And even though there are only two people on it, 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 and our psyche, you know, that you can't hear that guitar without hearing something now rising and, you know, coming to I think that's why it's popular in games and stadiums because it's like, here we are, defeat us. There we are now. I love that part so much. Let's 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 the crunchier riff with the blues. Right. And you're getting some more notes and they'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 is, I'm about to play it 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 lead's upland fan is that it's a Hendrix to me. It's a Hendrix to me. It's paid. It's Hendrix through page. The lineage to me, at least, sounds like I hear Hendrix as page would interpreted Jimmy Page from La Zeppelin 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, and by the way, inaccuracy, I'd never heard until you just play stems just now. I've 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 is 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 that was to capture spontaneity. And one of the goals of capturing spontaneity is to not overthink and I go very perfect. Like our parody song at the top of the seventh. I'm not hearing a lot of punching in, I don't not hearing any punching it. I think he played that he's like, look, I missed a note or two, but it sounded really human and sort of backed 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 court is in that moment. 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's although makes me wish I knew how to play guitar. Yeah. Cause I can only imagine like, looking out over of, you know, field of people, yeah, playing something that sounds that, you know, exciting, yeah, citing insane, evil, perfect. When I would come to the vocals of the lyrics, it's easy to forget how good of a singer, Jack White is until you try and do a parody song. And you're like, Oh, man, this is not, this is not a easy person to imitate. He's got a unique voice, very unique voice. And he pushes it to the hill. I also love the lyrics of this song, you know, like, let's just start for the top. I'm going to fight him off a seven nation army couldn't hold me back. They're going to rip it off, taking that time behind my back. Now, he said this song is about gossip and how he just didn't like how people were. There's about the time, yeah, by the way, that all of the rumors that he'd actually put out about him and being, you know, siblings and, you know, all that stuff was falling apart. I think it was an interview in 2001 or 2002 that the truth finally came out and they found the marriage license and all this. So all that 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 obfuscated, 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, the comes with being a big person in the music industry. I think that's really incredible. But I also just, you again, I always think about the year like I remember when I heard seven nation army couldn't hold me back, you know, we were going to war with Iraq, you know, and I thought that that was actually reference to us, you know, our our coalition, our coalition was much smaller in 2003 than it had been during the Gulf War in the 90s, you know, because we were saying there had weapons of bad 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 like we couldn't build this broad based coalition to attack Iraq again, but to hear Jack tell it, the seven nation army is just what he would call the Salvation Army. So it was a very distinctly, you know, personal. Yeah, that was like a childhood that's what he misheard the Salvation Army as seven Asian army. So we brought that back in. There's a lot in the lyrics that have probably connection to these I agree. I think there's 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. Yeah, that's that's a line that feels blues and maybe blues through the 60s. There's a little bit of rubber plants in the Hounds of Hell kind of line as well. So it's all on the Robert Johnson to Robert plant to all the Robert 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's 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 down, down, down, down to six, five, the five is the dominant, go back to listen to Michael Jackson, Billie Jean, 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. He's it's a major note in a minor, otherwise minor chord. And I say minor chord, but he's really just playing roots. There's a lot of implied notes and implied tonality in 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 go get it needs to go back to the one there. Yeah, doesn't it kind of do in the next one too on cigarette? Yeah. Back and forth through my mind behind the cigarette, he doesn't do it there. But I think when I was sitting here, I'm hearing into my head on it. You thought it was there? Well, let's listen again. Back and forth through my mind behind the cigarette. If anything, he's kind of implying the flatted version of that note that you're not major one, the minor version. I 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 Penn no, no, no episode. We've talked about blues a lot in this past year. But the major and minor, the simultane and Jimmy Hendrix episode centers, 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, 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 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? I'm gonna wish it stop. We all love which it's all we love the which it's all why why is it so gratifying? 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 I'm going to wichita like you just like why what you you could have ended the song there. 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, the reason why we're going to wichita. The opera. We're getting far from the opera in wichita. I think wichita wins it. Oh, no, I think it's a lot of talk about bleeding. And dripping in this thing. So like he's on the motif. He's basically say, Hey, I'm leaving this music business. I think he's saying, I'm leaving the music business. I'm going to wichita cast. I'm going to, you know, like these are fight words. These are this is a man who, you know, in another time would have had a guns lung on his side. Let's listen to what you talk. Let's listen to why he's going to wichita. What he's going to do there. I'm going to work this job. Make the sweat drip bottle every part. And I'm bleeding. And I'm bleeding. And I'm bleeding right before the Lord. Powerful stuff. Wichita Kansas bleed and Kansas. A lot of blood in here. I love the idea that words from his brain. And then he will think no more. So his thoughts are his blood. Oh, come on, man. This is genius. 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 of itself. I'm going to wichita. Uh huh. That's the first 30 minutes of the movie. I watch 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 the Jack White is a big force in this band. How do the splits break that 100% John Anthony White is the publishing split for this on the absence of a split, I would say this is the splitless song. He gets 100% of the publishing royalties. But Meg is getting the performance though, the master makes 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 have to recoup their advance. A lot of times these videos get rid of, you know, push you back in the recruitment process. Right. But then all the touring stuff she'd make money from that. Of course. I do. I would imagine Jack White's a swell dude. I'm sure he cut her in. Yeah. 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 Armenians? I mean, this is one of those songs. Look, the wife's drives 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 song blue orchid is a great song. Like they have other great songs. I will say as a person who follow them, you know, uniformly up to this point in their career, like this to me feels like a peak of some sort, 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 taking 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 say, oh, oh, 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 a sport event, crowd is going to chance. Oh, it's incredible. It's in the Pantheon, along with we will rock you. Yes. And done, done, done, done, done, done. For songs you hear in stadiums, it's a very small catalog. Exactly. I love that you brought up the done, done, done, done. There's a story that Jack shared about a seven Asian army becoming an anthem. He was on Conan. And they talked about this one time when they 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 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. Yeah. 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 that connected with people in that way. It's just a guttural feeling for them. As we were discussing earlier, this is Jack and his peak Michael Jackson. Totally totally. I mean, like, he looks so cool. But I, I think that's true. I think everything he said is true. Like, people always assume that if you have such mainstream successes this, you're somehow going to be the pissed off, you know, artists. I mean, like it happens so organically. It's not like, you know, folder's 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 kind of coming full circle from his own tradition with folk and blues, blues being a form of folk music, folk music, folk music, right. And people for the folks. Right. I think that totally works. And by the way, from his Brooke, it's Brooke Narian, it's 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 Brookner state. 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 calling 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 humbability. It's not singability interestingly. It's humbability, but it's sort of an easy, you know, crowd pleasing anthem and it's an anthem. Maybe that's what I'm looking for. And everybody says, you know, whether they say, oh, oh, I think I heard that the Italians say, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. It's the popo 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 he's talked about, he's narrowed it down to within the riff, he thinks that done, done, done, makes you think we're going up, done, done, done. So there's something satisfying about like, oh, there's a surprise, a pivot there. And then the second moment in the song triangle. Yeah. It feels like a triangle. Yeah. And then the second moment in the song, Jack White himself thinks might be contributing to its, you know, iconicness. Is that final half step done, done, done, 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, like, there's something funerial 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, makes foot, right? First, very hard. It's the 124, it's the heartbeat tempo. And one last thing as we were listening just now, I was only seeing 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 got more flavors to it. It's like the sandwich has more like sand, you know, layers added to the middle. The egg would sandwich in a blondie comics. Yeah. The dog would 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. 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 on. 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, say, in fact, there's something about him coming from the scene and I came from a scene too. We talked about scenes on the fallout boy episode. There can be something kind of toxic about scenes where there's a set. There's an orthodoxy scene kind of turns against Jack White. 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-nose 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 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. 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 Atoma da Naba. Atoma da Naba. And it's by this artist Florence Adunee. 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 beats more in the style of Faela 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 Adunee. Florence Adunee. It's a four-minute like explosion of just like amazing. It's infectious joy. I love it. I love it. It's 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 Adunee, 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 catalogue. 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 Fiaidia. 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 driving. We've said two very driving 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. You can find us on Instagram. You can DM us. Let us know. As always, you can find me on Instagram @Diolo. D-I-A-L-O and on TikTok @DioloRittle. You can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and on TikTok @Luxury-X-X. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok. Just follow it @OneSongPodcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of OneSong 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 OneSong 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 OneSong 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 helped 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 Roll. And this is one song we will see you next time. This episode was produced by Melissa Dwayneus, our video editor, is Casey Simonson, mixing by Michael Hartman and engineering by Eric Kicks. This show is exactly produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Spiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wall, and Leslie Wong. (gentle music)