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Jack White will forever be associated with The White Stripes, but that has never been his only focus. The endlessly creative White always has a number of creative outlets for his music, having released two albums with The Raconteurs, two as part of The Dead Weather, one solo, and even having a 7" release called Makers of High Grade Suites to his name, in one of his first bands, The Upholsterers.
Over the weekend, White's label Third Man Records shared a new Dead Weather single, the riotous "Open Up (That's Enough)," out January 14, although a new album isn't expected until 2015. With that long to wait, what better time to look back at Jack White's stacked non-White Stripes catalog? Here are his 10 best non-White Stripes songs.
2. 10. You Don't Understand Me
Album: Consolers of the Lonely
Year: 2006
As self-professed consolers of the lonely, The Raconteurs are almost obligated to speak on alienation, no? Indeed, the subject has never been a difficult one for White to touch on, often presenting himself—whether in appearance or artistry—as a ghostly, spectral figure, relaying messages for those who can't be heard. However, with "You Don't Understand Me," there's nothing so heavy as death or depression lying underneath White's lyricism; it's just another sad love song about a man who can't communicate with his woman. And after having to take a hiatus from The White Stripes, White can tell us all about heterosexual or social frustrations, perhaps hinting at his eventual artistic breakup from Meg White with this exasperated, defeated tale of two lovers divided.
3. 9. Broken Boy Soldier
Album: Broken Boy Soldiers
Year: 2008
The title track for White's first post-White Stripes album, "Broken Boy Soldier" is a scratchy, hard-bit number, featuring some of White's most vitrolic vocal work to date. Backed by a blizzard of clattering cymbals, and nervous, high-pitched guitars, White delivers a performance reminiscent of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," summoning the same primal catharsis that Robert Plant unleashes in the opening seconds of Zeppelin's iconic number. Whether playful, baroque, or unharnessed, White's versatility with his vox has always taken the backseat to his ability as a guitar player when critics discuss his musical repertoire. But on "Broken Boy Soldier," White shows that he won't let his voice go unheard for long.
4. 8. Old Mary
Album: Sea of Cowards
Year: 2010
The closing track for The Dead Weather's Sea of Cowards, "Old Mary" offers an impish take on the Holy Catholic Rosary, wrapped up in solemn, satiric subversion. "Old Mary, full of grease," White begins, casting the Virgin as just another flawed figure in his ornate, devilish masterpiece. "Old Mary" refuses the comfort of the prayer from which it draws inspiration, skittering about and screaming with unbridled, live-wire tension. With every electric scratch that cuts through the military march of White and Mosshart's vocal work, we arrive closer and closer to the finale, anxiously shepherded along like pigs ready for slaughter. Haunting, driving keys take us to the end. A pondering, lonely bassline delivers weight. Finally, at the conclusion, there is a fractured, but triumphant, breakdown to confirm what Mosshart and White have been telling us all along: we have arrived at the moment of our last breath.
5. 7. Freedom at 21
Album: Blunderbuss
Year: 2012
Given a 2013 Grammy nomination for "Best Rock Song," Blunderbuss's third single, "Freedom at 21," takes a perhaps-controversial stance on women's rights and female liberation in modern society, with White painting himself as the victim of an ex-lover's independence throughout the course of the song. However, this perspective isn't particularly surprising from White who, as we've seen from other tracks like "Love Interruption," is never afraid to present love as the brutal and often unforgiving exercise that it truly is. White can play either the sadist or the masochist in his work, but in "Freedom at 21" it's abundantly clear that he's the one getting kicked around here, and he'll be damned if it doesn't make him a little angry to see his girl do it so carelessly.
6. 6. Blunderbuss
Album: Blunderbuss
Year: 2012
Every so often, among the grimy garage dirt sonics of his Dead Weather and White Stripes discography, Jack White will uncover a gentle tune of an unquestionably different atmosphere and presence to what we're used to. The title track of White's debut solo album is—much like "We're Going to Be Friends" or "White Moon" before it—exactly one of these songs, giving White a platform to untie the ribbons knotting up his soul, and spill out its contents in a flurry of lively couplets. It's in these moments, when the cacophony of guitars and bass kicks that often buries his voice is silenced, that White becomes his most accessible, showing his audience that, when all the static fades away, there's still a man with a beating heart standing underneath.
7. 5. Treat Me Like Your Mother
Album: Horehound
Year: 2009
An Oedipal complex has always pervaded Jack White's lyricism, but with Dead Weather bandmate Allison Mosshart by his side, White was finally given a medium through which he could embody this maternal fascination. Though its shot through with dirty, sensual implications, "Treat Me Like Your Mother" is stripped of any heavy-handed sexual puns, instead seeing White and Mosshart take the psychoanalytic route with their message, letting one, simple line do all the work. The sheer Freudian gravity of the song's title should instantly turn us away, lest we appear perverse, but with Mosshart tugging, and then pulling, at our heartstrings, it becomes ever harder to say no.
8. 4. Blue Blood Blues
Album: Sea of Cowards
Year: 2010
The opening, distorted guitar riffs of "Blue Blood Blues" are perhaps the most recognizable moments of The Dead Weather's entire discography, serving as the backdrop for the battleships and broken bones and blue blood trails that dot the landscape of White's eternally fucked-up universe. There's a fearlessness in his lyricism throughout "Blue Blood," commanding and sure, that adds an extra authority to all of his statements and orders. Shake those hips! Check your lips! White isn't saying that he's able to make the white girls trip because of his music; he's telling us that he does it through his sheer presence alone. Even if his cockiness just serves as a mask for his insecurities (and in this song it most assuredly does) we still can't help but admire White for his unfailingly brash ego.
9. 3. Carolina Drama
Album: Consolers of the Lonely
Year: 2008
Surprise, surprise, the final Raconteurs track to make this list is not the monotone, melancholy hum, "Steady, As She Goes." Despite its vast popularity, the track can't hold a candle to the song that is perhaps most indicative of Jack White's ability as a storyteller, "Carolina Drama."
A down home, Southern ballad about Billy and his wildly tangled clan, the song bursts with detail about violence and familial trauma, culminating in the grand and glorious death of Billy's abusive near-step-father. Sacrificing none of the nuances of the act, White describes the "white milk that dripped down with the blood," the starting and end points of the murder, and Billy's little brother, who plays the part of comic relief when he walks into the scene "holding the milk man's hat and a bottle of gin," before leading us all to the swelling, exultant conclusion. Though he hails from Detroit, White is evidently well-studied in the art of Southern gothics, letting religion, money, and aggression all effortlessly blend into one another in one expertly crafted and completed story.
10. 2. Sixteen Saltines
Album: Blunderbuss
Year: 2012
"Sixteen Saltines" is a track that only a freshly-divorced, nearly-middle aged man like Jack White could make. Jealousy and depression linger throughout the song but, despite the fact that he has every reason to be angry or sad, White instead uses it as the stage for his coming-out party, celebrating his newly-freed sexuality like a cock crowing with the morning sun. As White says, he's hungry, and even when he gets his fill he's still going to lick his fingers and ask for seconds. Divorce and break-ups are always messy but, as "Sixteen Saltines"suggests, sometimes it's better to just wallow in that muck instead of desperately trying to rinse yourself clean.
11. 1. Will There Be Enough Water?
Album: Horehound
Year: 2009
At the end of The Dead Weather's first album, Horehound, sits an unexpected gem in Jack White's discography, the stumbling and bluesy "Will There Be Enough Water?" The song is such a surprise only because of how it seemingly represents the opposite of everything that White normally does in his music. We're given no hard-thumping amp static or intricate poetry. His mischievousness and non-negotiable edge are conspicuously absent. Instead, White chooses to answer the question that hangs over his filthy mind and the belligerent, sonic confrontations that he constructs; he gives us the answer to a question that none of us wanted to have to ask, but now feel we must: what happens when the party is over and all the booze is drunk and the woman you loved is gone?
Ambling, exhausted, and feverish, "Will There Be Enough Water?" suggests an answer that is neither pretty nor romantic nor sexy: White is dying of thirst, just hoping to find the next well-spring. He tries to manufacture a breakdown in the end—something that can send everyone home happy—but it packs none of the punch that we've come to expect from him. It's certainly a reality check, and certainly nothing that we wanted to hear, but after the mess that he's made, how else could we have expected it to end? Certainly no way other than this.
