Jack White reveals why he doesn’t write songs about himself: “I don’t need to go through it”
Jack White has opened up about pop singers writing about their personal lives, which he doesn’t find “interesting at all” for his own work.
The former White Stripes frontman made the admission in a new interview with The Guardian, in support of Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1, which curates many of White’s lyrical and poetic musings outside of The White Stripes.
When asked whether many of his songs are autobiographical, the star criticised the confessional, personal approach to writing lyrics.
White commented, “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.”
He went on, “I think it’s a little bit boring for me to write about myself. Even if I’ve had a really interesting day, I feel like I’ve already lived that, I don’t need to go through it every time I sing this song.”
White specifically chooses what kind of life events he keeps to himself: “If it’s something really painful,” he shared, “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.”
Explaining this type of lyrical extrapolation, he added, “So I put a percentage of that into what I do and then morph it into somebody else’s character. I can’t really learn about myself until I put it into somebody else’s shoes.”
White was also asked to explain the fact that he is a vocal critic of the Trump administration, yet he rarely writes overtly political songs. To this, he responded: “Well, when [Bob] Dylan said the answer was blowing in the wind, he didn’t tell you what the answer was.”
White is also dabbling in visual art, in addition to poetry and lyrics. His first-ever exhibition, titled ‘These Thoughts May Disappear’, is coming to London’s Newport Street Gallery this May.
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