Today, the opening riff of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” is enough to get an entire stadium singing. But when Jack White first played the tune for his roommate, the response was far from enthusiastic. More than two decades later, the song has earned a spot among Rolling Stone’s greatest rock songs of the 21st century.
The idea first came to White during a January 2002 soundcheck at the Corner Hotel, a pub and live music venue in Melbourne, Australia. As the White Stripes prepared to perform, the guitarist came up with the riff that would eventually become one of rock’s most recognizable hooks.
“I started playing that riff and I thought, ‘Oh, this is really cool,’” White recalled in the documentary It Might Get Loud, while speaking with Jimmy Page and the Edge. He then played the idea for his roommate, Ben Swank, but the reaction wasn’t quite what he’d hoped for. “And I said, ‘What do you think of this?’ And he’s like, ‘Eh, it’s alright.’”
Rather than abandon the idea, White took the lukewarm response as motivation to keep working on it. “It’s almost great when people say that – because it almost makes you get defensive in your brain and think, ‘No. There’s something to this. You don’t see it yet. It’s gonna get there,’” he explained.
White initially named the song “Seven Nation Army” after mispronouncing the Salvation Army as a child. He intended the title to be temporary, using it as a placeholder until he came up with lyrics. But the name stuck as the song took shape.
“The song’s about gossip,” White later told The Independent. “It’s about me, [bandmate] Meg [White] and the people we’re dating.”
In a separate interview with Rolling Stone, White shed more light on the song’s inspiration. “Seven Nation Army” was first “about two specific people I knew in Detroit. It was about gossip, the spreading of lies and the other person’s reaction to it. It came from the frustration of watching my friends do this to each other.”
The song gradually became a way for White to work through his own experiences. “It started to become a metaphor for things I was going through. But I never set out to write an expose on myself,” he said. “To me, the song was a blues at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The third verse could be something from a hundred years ago.”
Despite White’s belief in the song, it wasn’t an immediate favorite among those working on the White Stripes’ 2003 album Elephant. During recording sessions, “Seven Nation Army” was reportedly “not considered anything interesting” by people in the band’s camp.
“The labels didn’t want to release it as a single when we were coming out with the album,” White later said in an interview with Conan O’Brien.
Despite the label’s hesitation, White pushed for the song’s release, and it became the first single from Elephant on Feb. 17, 2003. “Seven Nation Army” climbed to No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative chart and won the Grammy for Best Rock Song. The track’s success was matched by its music video, whose kaleidoscopic effects made it a regular on MTV.
The riff soon found a second home in sports stadiums, where fans turned it into a chant heard at games around the world. White welcomed the way fans had taken the melody and made it their own.
“Nothing is more beautiful in music than when people embrace a melody and allow it to enter the pantheon of folk music,” White told O’Brien. “It’s not mine anymore. It becomes folk music when things like that happen. It becomes something that, the more people don’t know where it came from, the happier I am.”
The White Stripes’ hit has stood the test of time, earning the No. 2 spot on Rolling Stone’s ranking of the 200 greatest rock songs of the 21st century so far. In its review, the magazine highlighted the elements that made “Seven Nation Army” stand out, from its bass-like guitar riff to its popularity with marching bands.
“There was nothing cryptic about the power of that riff (played on guitar but sounding like a bass), the tension it builds before the track explodes, White’s elf-in-heat delivery, and a lead guitar that recalled Clapton’s Cream era,” the publication wrote.
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