The White Stripes - "Seven nation army"

Probably one of the easiest but most efficient riffs heard recently. Jack White (vocals & guitars) : "I wrote that riff in a soundcheck in Australia at a show that we played down there”.

Many people wrongly think that the riff was recorded with a bass guitar [The Whites Stripes don’t have a bass player], and that the vocals were recorded with a vocoder. Jack : "That's not a bass at the start but my guitar with an octave pedal”. Concerning the vocals : “I think it's the only time I used two takes of my voice - I doubled it. It said in the NME I used a vocoder, which is a complete insult to me”.

Jack explains where the title comes from : "It was a phrase that I used to say. When I was younger, there was a thrift store around called Salvation Army. I thought it was called Seven Nation Army, at least that's what I called it. That's where the phrase came from and I was building off from that when I was writing the lyrics”. Meg White (drums) : "Jack basically wrote the song around the idea of this guy who comes into town and all his friends are gossiping about him. It gets so bad, he wants to leave town and then he decides not to".

Jack : "The song felt strong when we mixed the album down. It felt like it should be the first track on the album. It just felt like an opening, explosive thing. I thought it would be interesting to release that at first. Also, I thought that if I got offered to write the next James Bond soundtrack that would be the riff for it. I don't think I'm going to get the chance though".

As for the video, it is considered to be one of the most effective motion-sickness-inducing devices.

Available on the album “Elephant”