i often feel like i "should" like the white stripes, in the way that you "should" eat your vegetables and floss your teeth. it feels like a good-for-you obligation that everyone just kind of tolerates because it's better for you in the end if not enjoyable in the moment. but hannah, you might say, they're *real* rock in a sea of schlocky pop! their lead singer is a notoriously private genius who eschews the mainstream - not like all those autotune fakers! (/s) this is what real music sounds like!!!!!! well it sounds bad. so. okay, okay, not really - this is aggressively fine. the white stripes are fine. it's just all varying degrees of fine. i just can't help but be irked by jack white's nasally couldn't-be-bothered voice and the crunchy guitars. it's cool they have a female drummer i guess? but this is the most 3/5 music i could imagine existing. also, unrelated, but i just looked up jack white on Wikipedia, and as recently as 2022 he was moaning and groaning about the evils of video games like it was 1999. ("White thumbed his nose at the music games genre last year as well, decrying games as a way to introduce people to music.") dude, shut the fuck up and play some DDR and maybe you'll calm down. sorry, i just irrationally hate his old-soul luddite kids-these-days bullshit when he's one of the most successful and famous musicians of all time and got there in part to inclusion in mainstream culture (gasp!) and, yes, music games. ANYWAY!!!! the big songs are good. I liked Now Mary too. that's all.