Weird parallels between Jack White and Michael Jackson abound in a Kennedy/Lincoln assassination
sort of way. It’s not just that “My Doorbell” sounds like a B-side off of “ABC”: for starters, they both began their early careers looking distinctly genre-appropriate, MJ sporting a Jerry Curled, high-collared 80’s dance-funk look, JW mop-haired and bicep t-shirted. But as their respective careers progressed, their looks have taken turns for the pretty weird: Michael turned into this kinda smooth piece of porcelain lady-putty, while Jack doesn’t seem to mind that he looks like Dave Navarro. And the obvious racial mirroring: Michael Jackson, who is black, recorded crossover hits that white people loved (such as “Black and White”), and then later became white. Jack White, who is white, rips off black music forms and has black hair, but is also named Jack White. Plus, the cover art of the “Blue Orchid” single is the same as the LP art, except instead of Jack and Meg it’s two black people. (Huh?)
If we’re going to follow this comparison all the way through, we also have to acknowledge that Michael Jackson is much farther along his career trajectory than Jack White, who’s currently boasting commercial success and critical (at least on NPR) acclaim; also, he doesn’t look quite as odd as Michael, yet. Jack is kind of at the place in Michael Jackson’s career where Michael Jackson was doing Captain EO and wearing shiny spacesuits and we all thought he was pulling off some amazing black-Ziggy Stardust throwback–but it turns out he was just actually like that. So I propose that we use Michael Jackson as a paradigm, a prognosticational aid. If history is to repeat itself, then we can expect that some point within the decade, Jack White is going to go very wrong, and the only question is, How?
Forever For Her (Is Over For Him)
Meg White occupies an awkward media position. When a rock band starts getting exposure, usually it’s the frontman who draws the attention while the rest of the band fills in the margins and throws out the odd puckish remark that would be too off-kilter for the frontman to say himself. But since part of the Stripes’ schtick is having only two members, Meg is a necessary aesthetic counterbalance: red and white, male and female, guitar and drums, Jack and Meg. Without her there it’s just a wigger with a guitar. But this is no Mates of State we’re-rocking-out-and-we’re-in-love deal, and it’s not a Dresden Dolls weird-rock-couple-from-Neptune thing, nor does it have the side-projecty kitsch of an outfit like Quasi (a couple with a similar marital biography). No, this is a lot weirder: first, Jack tells everyone in interviews that they’re brother and sister in a big family, a standard blues mythological trope. Then out of the bowels of the Internet, right around the release of White Blood Cells, comes the divorce certificate: absolutely nobody is surprised, but all of the sudden the odd sexlessness of their rapport makes sense. The issue date of their divorce certificate is March 2000; more revealingly, the date they’d last lived together is recorded as
The conflict playing out in these songs is clear as red and white: “Why Can’t You Be Nicer To Me?”. “Death Letter”. “I’m Finding it Harder to be a Gentleman”. “Offend in Every Way”. “The Union Forever” is a pun whose sarcasm is echoed in the backhandedness of other songs: You’re gonna need a bigger room. You’re pretty good looking… for a girl. The titular suggestion in “Let’s Build a Home” is followed by the diss: I’m getting lazy, throw me a bone. And to pair a title like “It’s True That We Love One Another” with the first guest duet of their career, thus making Meg the third wheel? Pretty cold, Jack. Anyway, whatever. You can pretty much tease any kind of meaning out of song titles (I told Becca that you could argue that all White Stripes songs are about getting to third base, supported by the titular entendre of “The Air Near My Fingers”, “My Doorbell”, “Red Rain”, “The Hardest Button to Button”, and “I’m Bound to Pack It Up”). But the point is that when Jack is singing, it’s not us he’s singing to, it’s Meg.