Robbed hit of the week 3/11/24 - White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army"...

 

 

"Seven Nation Army" - The White Stripes

from the album Elephant (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #76 (two weeks)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the White Stripes, who came together in Detroit in the late 1990s. Despite portraying themselves as brother and sister, Jack and Meg White were actually married from 1996 to 2000. Jack, who had shuffled amongst bands earlier, enlisted Meg as his drummer in the duo. After releasing a couple of singles themselves, the pair signed up with indie label Sympathy For The Record Industry, where they released their eponymous debut album in 1999, which featured the single "The Big Three Killed My Baby", which satirized the local automobile industry. 

Despite divorcing out of the spotlight, Meg proposed to stay on professionally, and the duo put out their sophomore effort De Stijl the following year. A third album on the Sympathy label, White Blood Cells, would be the set to use the critical acclaim they've been receiving to a wider audience, when Richard Branson's new label V2 (his first, Virgin was a huge success that he sold off) released it under the Universal distribution umbrella which carried Jack's Third Man Records imprint. The single "Fell In Love With A Girl", one of two songs from the album to reach Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock Airplay at #12, while "bubbling under" the Hot 100 all-genre list at #121. The music video from Michael Gondry, which used Lego blocks to "animate" the pair, was a huge success on MTV. The White Blood Cells album also placed on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #61, going on to sell over a million copies. 

 

In 2003, Jack and Meg returned with their third album, and first recorded for the Third Man/V2 label, Elephant. The lead single from the project was the blues-punk of "Seven Nation Army". Written and produced by Jack, the song is a tour de force of angst about dealing with scrutiny in becoming famous.  The lyrics are bare boned and cryptic, but contribute to the sonic menace the thumpy rhythm pace Meg throws down. The music video, with its geometric onslaught of red, white, and black, was just as iconic as the Lego clip, and MTV was definitely on board. However, pop radio in America, which was in its separation from non-electronic alternative music, somehow stayed away, but rock radio picked up the slack...

While "Seven Nation Army" spent three weeks at #1 on Billboard's Alternative Rock radio chart, as well as getting to #12 on their Maintream Rock counterpart, the song stalled in the bottom quarter of the Hot 100 in May of 2003. Internationally, the single did much better, reaching the top ten in Italy (#3), Switzerland (#3), Germany (#4), and the United Kingdom (#7), and made the top-40 in Australia (#17), Austria (#18), and Ireland (#22). The Elephant album, released in April of that year, came in at #6 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards, "Seven Nation Army" won for Best Rock Song, and was nominated for Best Duo/Group Rock Performance with Vocals, losing to Warren Zevon and Bruce Springsteen's entry "Disorder In The House" (probably from Zevon's sad passing the year before). The Elephant album also won for Best Alternative Rock Album, and was up for Album Of The Year, which went home with rap duo Outkast for Speakerboxx/The Love Below. 

The second single from Elephant was "The Hardest Button To Button", which made it to #8 on Billboard's Alternative Rock radio chart, and #23 in the UK. That was followed by a cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself", which rose to #25 on the Alternative list, while making the top-40 in the UK (#13) and New Zealand (#34). A fourth release, "There's No Home For You Here", was promoted to little fanfare (sadly). 

Jack and Meg would eventually conquer the Hot 100 top-40, but nothing they've done would have the lasting impact that the lo-fi masterpiece of "Seven Nation Army" was. It was actually hard writing, as the song invokes more emotion that analysis in me. 

(10/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's the White Stripes on Conan O'Brien in 2003...

The following year, they were on the Grammy Awards where they picked up two trophies...

Up next, live in concert in Bonaroo in 2007...

Lastly, Jack White brought SNA back at his solo Glastonbury stint in 2022...