Brian McCollum

Detroit Free Press Pop Music Critic

The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" was selected at No. 6 in Detroit's 100 Greatest Songs, after voting by thousands of music fans and Detroit music professionals.

In an email interview with the Free Press, Jack White looked back on the 2003 song and reflected on its enduring impact around the world. (The email exchange has been edited for standardized style.)

1. Take us back to the origins of the riff, and its evolution into a fully fleshed-out song. (And anything cool/interesting about the writing/recording we may not have heard before.)

The melody for the song was written at a soundcheck for a show in Australia at a club called the Corner Hotel in Melbourne. I played the riff over and over in front of Meg White and our friend Ben Swank. I seemed to be the only person who thought it was interesting at the time, but it grew on my musician friends eventually! I initially had it written in my notes for the making of our new album as “Bond Theme” since I thought I might save it if I ever got the chance to right a theme for a James Bond film, quickly realizing that that would probably never happen (ironically I did go on to write a Bond theme later!). I started to write lyrics for the song which we then recorded in London for the White Stripes album “Elephant." Amazingly our record labels did not want to release the song as a single when we put the album out initially.

2. About that main riff: You let it carry the chorus by itself. Had you at any point considered placing vocals atop it, or did you always realize it worked more powerfully standing alone?

Part of the exercise and challenge for me as a songwriter with "Seven Nation Army" was to try to NOT put a chorus in the song. I wanted to see how powerful I could make the track without resorting to it having a chorus. In fact the melody never changes, only repeats and gets louder and quieter. The idea of a melody not changing in a song is found in a lot of hip-hop tracks through history where through sampling a melody, only the words create the “chorus.”

3. The song "is about gossip," as you've said elsewhere, with a narrator compelled to split town because of it. You also make an obvious Detroit reference in the video during the line citing "this opera." How much should or shouldn't we read into "Seven Nation Army" as a take on your actual life here circa 2002-03?

At the time I took some inspiration about some people I knew gossiping, and some slight desperation in the character singing. But it had nothing to do with me personally, except that my sister Maureen reminded me that I used to mispronounce the name of the Salvation Army store as “the seven nation army” when I was a young boy! Haha, so I crossed out "Bond Theme" in my book and wrote that title instead as a way to inspire myself lyrically. Ironically it was my brother Joe and his wife Robin who were working at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store in southwest Detroit that gave me the Kay guitar I performed the song on as payment for moving a refrigerator for them.

I put myself into the character when I sang it in a traditional blues sense, especially in the idea of travelling to "Wichita," a place I’ve still never been, and out of respect for using the city as a metaphor, and due to the song’s longevity now, I will never go to. Limitations like those help my creativity.

I made the Michigan hand reference in the video as an inside joke to fellow people from Michigan because they’re the only ones who know what it means to point to your hand and say, “I’m from Kalamazoo.”

4. You created something that has taken on a power and endurance far beyond the White Stripes. What's your reaction to the riff having become a global anthem, chanted in packed stadiums by fans who have made it their own piece of organic music?

As a songwriter it is one of the things I am most proud of being a part of. Modern folk music around the world happens when groups of people gather together in larger numbers, not in small homes and villages like it used to in the past. And many times this will happen in sports arenas of course, particularly soccer. What thrills me the most is that people are chanting a melody, which separates it from chants like “Thank God I’m a Country Boy" and “We Will Rock You” and many of the most popular songs where large groups tend to clap or sing words and not just notes.

I especially love that most people have no idea what song the melody they are chanting came from. There is a scene in the film "Yankee Doodle Dandy" in which George M. Cohan feels this same feeling about his song "Over There." And that inspires me greatly and makes me feel proud that I was a conduit and antenna at one moment in time for other people to help express themselves. The less people know where it came from, the more it is ingrained in the tradition of folk music, and the more it feels anonymous to the public, the more I’m fulfilled as a songwriter.