White Blood Cells is the third studio album by American rock duo the White Stripes. It was released by Sympathy for the Record Industry on July 3, 2001 and reissued by V2 Records in 2002. Produced by guitarist and lead vocalist Jack White, the album was recorded at Easley-McCain Recording in Tennessee over three days and was their first work to be mastered in a studio. The process cost and was rushed in order to capture a "real tense feeling" and the band's raw energy.
Following their success within the Detroit music scene, the White Stripes began to shift from their blues-inspired roots to a garage rock sound. The album contains lyrics about love, hope, betrayal, and paranoia, while its name and cover art reference the band's disillusionment with fame and the mainstream music industry. For promotion, they played a trio of shows in Detroit and released "Hotel Yorba", "Fell in Love with a Girl", and "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" as singles.
White Blood Cells charted in nine countries, reaching number 61 on the US Billboard 200 and number 55 on the UK Albums Chart, and earned platinum certifications in both countries. The album received widespread acclaim and propelled Jack and Meg White to the forefront of the 2000s indie and garage rock movements. Since its release, it has been ranked by several critics among the best albums of all time.
Background and recording
The White Stripes previously sought success in the Detroit music scene, releasing two albums between 1999 and 2000. In the interim, bandmates Jack and Meg White divorced; however Meg insisted that they continue working together. They had still been living in the house purchased from Jack's parents and lived within their means, having had no inkling of the mainstream success that would greet them with this album. With De Stijl (2000), they were content to tour modestly, come home, and go back to their respective normal day jobs as the word "success" meant no longer having to work one. That goal became a reality with the tour: Jack closed his upholstery studio and Meg eventually left her restaurant job. Paradoxically, Meg kept her uniforms out of the superstitious belief that throwing them away would bring such bad luck that it would lead her back to working a day job.
Prior to White Blood Cells, the White Stripes had no interest in working with a major label for fear of losing artistic freedom and the horror stories associated with the mainstream music industry. However, the band would leave Sympathy for the Record Industry that year due to the lack of stewardship of its business and sign with V2 Records in November 2001. Jack soon realized their apprehensions toward major labels were completely inaccurate and went as far as to say he would never let his own child sign to an independent label if they became a musician.
Before production, the White Stripes originally envisioned for White Blood Cells to be a double album. With the title already in mind as of December 2000, Jack thought of recording the first disc in studio and the other disc at home, with a plethora of country and piano-based songs he had written. Disenchanted with the media's "bringing-back-the-blues" label placed on the band after De Stijl, Jack sought for them to do an album focused on songwriting and purposely kept blues music off the album.
Following De Stijl, which was recorded in the living room of their Detroit home with Jack as its producer and engineer, they decided to leave town to record White Blood Cells, after finding that recording the previous album at home was a "bad idea" and that they work better with one other person. Jack later explained that his diplomatic nature led him to prefer working that way, for better or worse, allowing him to communicate his musical vision without undesired conflict.
After rehearsing for a week, the White Stripes recorded White Blood Cells over three days, in 12- to 13-hour shifts, in February 2001, at Easley McCain Recording in Memphis, Tennessee. Having never been there, Jack and Meg felt "Memphis was exactly like Detroit. [...] It was a good thing." Jack elaborated that Memphis was "a lot more connected to reality. It's not the harsh reality of Detroit, it doesn't have the urban decay that was in a lot of our songs in the past," and Tennessee in general felt "so much [like] home." The studio was chosen in part by the suggestion of Jack Yarber, of the band the Oblivians, as well as '68 Comeback's Jeffrey Evans. It was the band's first time recording, mixing and mastering their music in a 24-track recording studio, and Jack asked recording engineer Stuart Sikes more than once "not to make it sound too good."
Jack recorded his vocals next to Meg as she played the drums to replicate the live performance dynamic, as the studio was too large to record them separately. According to Sikes, in order to save money, the first 12 tracks of the tape were used until they were filled, the machine was backed up to the beginning to use the remaining 12 tracks. Meg was initially hesitant about rushing the recording process, believing the songs were "too new" and required more practice. Rushing the record, however, was done in order to keep the album "as unorganized as possible" and get "a real tense feeling". The band utilized the most amount of limitations placed upon themselves for any album they had ever done. The production of the album cost about .
Music and lyrics
Composition and sound Continuing the stripped-down garage rock nature of the White Stripes, White Blood Cells features less of the band's blues rock influences, instead displaying a more raw, basic, and primitive rock and roll sound. Shortly before the release of White Blood Cells, Jack asserted that "There's no blues on the new record. We're taking a break from that. There's no slide work, bass, guitar solos, or cover songs. It's just me and Meg, guitar, drums and piano." It is one of two White Stripes albums to not feature any covers of other artists.
The lyrics in White Blood Cells explore love, hope, betrayal, and paranoia, brought on by the increasing media attention the duo began receiving. Some of the songs were written in the band's early years, or inspired by other side-projects of Jack. Jack said being able to utilize his older works was "cool because a lot of things had been sitting around for a long time, stuff I had written on piano that had been just sitting around not doing anything. And it was good to put them all together at once, put them all in the same box and see what happened." Many songs that ended up on the album were originally written by Jack for his former band Two-Star Tabernacle. These include "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground", "Hotel Yorba", "The Union Forever", "The Same Boy You've Always Known", "Offend in Every Way", and "Now Mary".
Songs 1–8
"Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground", the first of multiple former Two-Star Tabernacle songs to be adapted by the White Stripes, was first performed by the White Stripes on a local radio show in early 1999. It was recorded for their debut album, but Jack didn't feel it was ready until the production of White Blood Cells. According to Jack, although the song was his idea, the "structure", "soul", and "White Stripes feeling" of the song came from Meg's drumming. The music video was filmed in London, England and directed by Michel Gondry with numerous takes to crosscut and superimpose the wreckage of the Whites' fictional home. "Hotel Yorba" is based on the former hotel of the same name, which was a couple of blocks from Jack's childhood home. It was inspired by a rumor Jack had loved about The Beatles staying there. It was recorded at the hotel but the duo were quickly banned from the premises. Its B-side contained a live cover of 1972's country hit "Rated "X"" by Loretta Lynn.
Critics perceived "I'm Finding It Harder to be a Gentleman" to be about the dissolution of the romantic relationship between Jack and Meg, who divorced over a year before the release of the album. They also perceived Jack as lyrically embodying the archaic gender roles of men in the 1930s Deep South, though Jack insisted he disagreed with their depraved behavior and does not identify as a conservative person or Republican at all, saying it was just "throwing an idea to see what the reaction is," and an attempt to "shock people." In an interview with NME, Jack said among other things that the song was about how women expect him to live up to certain standards in relationships that they wouldn't hold themselves to, though Meg insinuated that she was ambivalent toward the lyrics, saying "I don't know about that one," when asked.
"Fell in Love with a Girl", the album's second single, became the band's breakthrough to the mainstream, aided by its Lego-animation music video, directed and conceptualized by Gondry. Gondry was inspired by the album cover art for Three Imaginary Boys (1979) by The Cure as well as The White Stripes' imagery of red, white, and black of which reminded him of Legos. Fifteen animators took six weeks to create the video. The song was compared to the work of the English punk rock band Buzzcocks as well as Surfer Rosa-era Pixies. Because of its brief length, just under two minutes, the song was not initially expected to be played on the radio.
"Expecting" depicts a relationship in which a woman is never satisfied with him and expects more and more of him. It makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to Toledo, Ohio, about an hour away from Detroit, in which the narrator is sent against his will. The song concludes with Meg seemingly asking a favor. Billboard considered it a "colossal rocker" and standout guitar track on the album in its review. "Little Room" has been described as an "homily", written in response to Jack's favorite song, "Grinnin' in Your Face" by Son House. It is the third of the six songs in the White Stripes discography to feature the word "little" in its title.
The White Stripes didn't start performing "The Union Forever" until Meg's nascent drumming skills began to develop. It contains allusions to Citizen Kane (1941), Jack's favorite film, and nearly every line in the song comes from the movie; Warner Bros. was once rumored to be suing the band over copyright infringement for Citizen Kane. "The Same Boy You've Always Known" is a rock ballad. In an interview with broadcast journalist Dan Rather, Jack chose the song as the one that he'd like to be played at his memorial. The song was most likely written between late 1998 and early 1999, during the "Living Room Sessions" hobby that occurred at a local venue that Jack went to weekly. It was first performed in April 1999.
Songs 9–16