History Music / TheWhiteStripes

%% ZeroContextExample * BunnyEarsLawyer: Jack White, non-stop.

* HairTriggerTemper: Jack beat the living crap out of Jason Stollsteimer, the lead singer of The Von Bondies, and was forced to take anger management classes.

* PissTakeRap: The song "Icky Thump" has rapid fire singing from Jack White, and the lyrics:
--> Who's using who?
--> What should we do?
--> Well you can't be a pimp
--> And a prostitute too.

* ChainedToABed: The music video for "Icky Thump".
* ColorMotif: White, black, and red are used exclusively in any imagery related to the band. According to [[WordOfGod JackWhite]]

* BoyMeetsGhoul: "Little Ghost".

* DuelOfSeduction: "Conquest"

* HeavyMeta:
** "Rag and Bone" is about taking and reusing old stuff no one else wants, a transparent metaphor for Jack White's approach to making music.
** Jack & Meg consider each other siblings, and pretended to be related when they first gained media attention. Jack claimed this was because he wanted them to focus on the music and not their relationship. John Anthony Gillis changed his name upon marrying Megan Martha White, before they formed the band together.

* LimitedWardrobe: Limited to white, black, and red.[[note]]"But the White Stripes' colors were always red, white and black. It came from peppermint candy. I also think they are the most powerful color combination of all time, from a Coca-Cola can to a Nazi banner. Those colors strike chords with people." -- Jack White.[[/note]]

* MindScrew: "St. Andrew (This Battle Is In the Air)".

* OdeToYouth: "We're Going To Be Friends"

* {{Retraux}}: Jack consciously appropriates imagery and music from everything from TheThirties (Robert Johnson, ''De Stijl''), TheFifties (portions of ''Get Behind Me Satan'') to TheSixties. There is also the Victorian-style video for "Blue Orchid".

* BunnyEarsLawyer: Jack White, non-stop.

* EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette: Jack and Meg.
* {{Garfunkel}}: Meg, but she was so modest and shy that she isn't an ''obnoxious'' Garfunkel.
* HappilyMarried: Inverted, into "[[AmicablyDivorced Happily Divorced]]".

* LongRunnerLineUp (LogicalExtreme): It was just Jack and Meg from formation to split.

* TheSilentBob: Meg.

* ViolentGlaswegian: Jack is part Scottish -- see HairTriggerTemper.

* HairTriggerTemper: Jack beat the living crap out of Jason Stollsteimer, the lead singer of The Von Bondies, and was forced to take anger management classes.

* TheMaidenNameDebate: Jack (born John "Jack" Gillis) took Meg's last name when they married and kept it when they divorced.

!!The White Stripes provide examples of:

* AnimatedMusicVideo: "Fell in Love with a Girl": [[BuiltWithLego stop-motion LEGO animation.]]

* AntiLoveSong: A few of them. Examples include "I'm Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman", "Fell In Love With a Girl", and "Effect and Cause".
* ArcNumber: The number 3 is a big part of the band's methodology, especially in their image (the red white and black combination) and music (which adheres to three basic elements: melody, rhythm, storytelling).
* AudienceParticipationSong: "Seven Nation Army".
* AuthorAppeal: As mentioned below, Jack seems to have a thing for redheads, and several of the band's songs make reference to (or are just plain about) sexy red-headed women ("Fell In Love With a Girl", "Take, Take, Take", "300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues", etc.).
* BadassBoast: These occur in a few of their songs, but "Ball and Biscuit", which is basically 7+ minutes of continual {{Badass Boast}}ing, particularly stands out: "Right now you could care less about me / but soon enough you ''will'' care by the time I'm done."

* BoyMeetsGhoul: "Little Ghost".
* BreakupSong: Many ("I'm Bound to Pack It Up", "There's No Home For You Here", "Red Rain", "You've Got Her In Your Pocket", "The Denial Twist", "I'm Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman", etc.) covering the topic from every conceivable emotional angle. Kind of funny when you consider that they were once a couple themselves.

* ChainedToABed: The music video for "Icky Thump".

* ADogNamedDog: The lyrics in "The Hardest Button to Button" mention the birth of a baby boy that is named "Baby".
* DuelOfSeduction: "Conquest"
* DrosteImage: The video for "Seven Nation Army".

* EpicRocking: "Ball and Biscuit," clocking in at over seven minutes.
** "Death Letter" could get quite long, too, when played live.
* GarageRock: Along with Music/TheHives, they were the GenrePopularizer of it's revival in the early 2000s.

* GratuitousPanning: The lead guitar in "Hello Operator" stays in the right channel for much of the song. The vocal track in "Take, Take, Take" will occasionally fly between channels at random.
* HairTriggerTemper: Jack beat the living crap out of Jason Stollsteimer, the lead singer of The Von Bondies, and was forced to take anger management classes.

* HeavyMeta:
** "Rag and Bone" is about taking and reusing old stuff no one else wants, a transparent metaphor for Jack White's approach to making music.
** Jack & Meg consider each other siblings, and pretended to be related when they first gained media attention. Jack claimed this was because he wanted them to focus on the music and not their relationship. John Anthony Gillis changed his name upon marrying Megan Martha White, before they formed the band together.

* IAmBecomingSong: "I'm Slowly Turning Into You".

* LetsDuet: "This Protector", "Rag and Bone"; "It's True That We Love One Another" is a three-way CallAndResponseSong among Jack, Meg, and English singer Holly Golightly.
* Letters2Numbers: Subtly done with the back cover of ''Elephant'' - the E's in the title are actually rendered as backwards 3's.
* LimitedWardrobe: Limited to white, black, and red.[[note]]"But the White Stripes' colors were always red, white and black. It came from peppermint candy. I also think they are the most powerful color combination of all time, from a Coca-Cola can to a Nazi banner. Those colors strike chords with people." -- Jack White.[[/note]]

* TheSilentBob: Meg.

* UnrelatedBrothers: Jack and Meg claimed to be brother and sister when the band first became famous, when they were actually ex-spouses.
* ViolentGlaswegian: Jack is part Scottish -- see HairTriggerTemper.
* WorkingWithTheEx

* {{Gainaxing}}: Meg plays the drums without wearing a bra.

!!TheWhiteStripes provide examples of:

The White Stripes were an AlternativeRock duo consisting of Jack White Meg White. They were founded in Oak Park, Michigan (one of UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}}'s smaller northern suburbs) in 1997. In the band's lifetime they released six albums (and a few live albums):

* AmicablyDivorced: Despite having divorced in 2000, an extremely close platonic friendship has evolved out of Jack and Meg's failed marriage. Meg was the maid of honor at Jack's 2005 marriage to model/musician Karen Elson. Meg and her second husband Jackson Smith were married in Jack White's backyard in 2009.

** To distract the media, Jack & Meg pretended to be siblings. Jack claimed this was because he wanted them to focus on the music and not their relationship. Also, their last names are stage names. They're actually not related in any way but performing together.
*** Well, ''kind of''. As noted above, they were married from 1995 to 2000. The interesting bit is that John Anthony ''Gillis'' changed ''his'' name upon marrying Megan Martha White. This happened as just a funny thing he decided to do when they got married; it wasn't for another two years that he got it in his head that his wife might join him onstage.

The White Stripes were an AlternativeRock duo consisting of Jack White and his ex-wife ([[BrotherSisterIncest though billed as his sister]]), Meg White. They were founded in Oak Park, Michigan (one of UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}}'s smaller northern suburbs) in 1997. In the band's lifetime they released six albums (and a few live albums):

Meg White remarried in 2009, but has fallen off the grid since 2011.

* ShoutOut: "The Union Forever", from White Blood Cells, is about {{Citizen Kane}}. Most of the lyrics are lines from the movie.

* KayfabeMusic: Jack insisted that his and Meg's relationship was that of being the two youngest siblings of ten, and that the idea for the band forming came when Meg began playing on Jack's drumkit in 1997. [[WordOfGod Jack says]] that this was to hide the true relationship of them being married (and AmicablyDivorced), as he feared people would focus more on the band's relationship than their music.

The White Stripes were an AlternativeRock duo consisting of Jack White and his ex-wife ([[BrotherSisterIncest though billed as his sister]]), Meg White. They were founded in Oak Park, Michigan (one of UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}}'s smaller northern suburbs) in 1997. Since then, they have released six albums:

* ArcNumber: The number 3 crops up a lot in the band's methodology, image (the red white and black combination) and music (which tend to strip back to three basic elements, usually guitar/piano, vocals and drums).

* GratuitousPanning: The lead guitar in "Hello Operator" stays in the right channel for much of the song.

* GratuitousPanning: The lead guitar in "Hello Operator" stays in the left channel for the entire song.

* LongRunnerLineup (LogicalExtreme): It was just Jack and Meg from formation to split.

* ''White Blood Cells'' (2001)