Jack White clarifies recent songwriting comments and slams media response
Jack White has clarified his recent comments on songwriting and claims that he does not find Taylor Swift’s music “boring”.
The White Stripes frontman came under fire over the weekend after an interview was published in The Guardian, in which he claimed: “Now it’s become very popular in the Taylor Swift way of pop singers writing about all of their publicly aired break-ups, which I don’t find interesting at all. I think it’s a little bit boring for me to write about myself.”
He continued: “If it’s something really painful, I’m not going to put this important, painful thing that I went through out there for some idiot on the internet to stomp all over.”
Despite the comments seeming as if they were directed to his own personal view of music, White has subsequently come under fire from Swift fans for his comments, which he attempted to douse in a social media post on March 9th.
Although the post has since been deleted, White said he wanted to “put this to bed” as his comments have been misrepresented compared to the truth of what he meant.
“I didn’t say that I think Taylor Swift’s music was ‘boring’ or whatever click bait the net is trying to scrape together,” he said, going on to add: “I don’t find it interesting at all for ME to write about MYSELF in my own lyric writing and poetry because I think that it could be repetitive for ME to always write about.”
He added, “Imaginary characters are more attractive to me as a writer.” White continued by saying that pop stars such as Swift have had “tremendous success” with their own sonic brands, and he is “very happy for them”.
However, he did note, “Just because I say I have a way of doing things doesn’t mean that I think that EVERYONE should do it the same way. They should do what works for them, and they do, and it is obviously appealing to many people, and I’m glad to hear that,” White clarified.
While White was speaking to The Guardian about the release of his book Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1, he claimed that the fallout from this issue has made him “less and less interested in doing interviews” in the future.
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