The 50-second song The White Stripes wrote about fame
2001 was an excellent year for indie rock music. The Strokes released their esteemed album Is This It, Muse released Origin of Symmetry, Gorillaz released their self-titled debut, and The White Stripes dropped White Blood Cells.
Despite being their third studio album, the latter has been regarded as The White Stripes’ first and biggest rise to commercial success. Among its hits were ‘Fell in Love with a Girl’, ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground’, and ‘We’re Going to Be Friends’. It showcased the band dropping their signature blues-rock-inspired sound for a more raw and primitive rock and roll sound: a decision that would ultimately solidify the band as one of the most prominent figures of the indie rock revival.
At the time, rising to fame so sharply did not escape the duo. The White Blood Cells album cover actually plays on this trope, showing Jack and Meg White surrounded by silhouettes of photographers, reflecting the amount of mainstream popularity they were getting at the time. They also incorporated this into some of the album’s lyrics, using their craft as a creative outlet for the pressures they were facing.
Nestled within the more obvious tracks, ‘Little Room’ is actually pretty easy to miss. For starters, it’s only 50 seconds long, so if you’re not paying attention, you’ll probably forget about it just as fast as it comes and goes. However, for Jack White, the song represented the epitome of their changing reputation at the time. What started as ambivalence soon became something else: the stark realisation that the room could get bigger.
“People were starting to become disinterested in us in that underground garage-rock cool world,” White admitted. “There’s a photograph of Meg and I and people attacking us, but then they turn out to have cameras… […] I was trying to make the point to myself that there’s an idea about authenticity and pureness in art that everyone has a different take on. And it takes a lot of time for people to really realise how much truth there is in that.”
On its own, the song also provides a reminder of the importance of remaining humble. If your music is good enough to warrant a “bigger room”, White says, then “you might have to think of how you got started, sitting in your little room.”
The White Stripes did go on to achieve widespread success among the other big players like The Strokes, with their follow-up to White Blood Cells, Elephant, which propelled them to the fore of the garage rock revival scene. Perhaps neither Jack nor Meg White, however, could have prepared for a room big enough to contain the beast that would become ‘Seven Nation Army’.
