1001 Albums Summary

Elephant is The White Stripes’ fourth album, and it pretty much carries one of the most iconic rock songs ever made with “Seven Nation Army”. this song has one of the most famous and memorable guitar riffs in history by the great Jack White. idk what the fuck he was smoking in the studio but he had to have been in some magical zone or something coming up with that riff and everything that came after in their career had to live in its shadow unfortunately 😭✌🏻. the thing is with this album, once you get past that unbelievable opener… the rest of the album kind of feels like Seven Nation Army and friends 😅. that’s not inherently a diss however. there are some genuinely great tracks here like “Black Math,” “Ball and Biscuit,” and “The Hardest Button to Button” all go hard in their own way. they’re of course not on the same level as the big hit, but that’s not really a fair comparison because almost nothing is on here and that’s alright. there are also a handful of solid songs like “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself,” “The Air Near My Fingers,” “Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine,” and the lovely “In the Cold, Cold Night,” which is the rare track with Meg White on lead vocals. she actually does a really good job, and it makes me wish she had been given more moments like that. even without more lead vocal time, her drumming across the album is tight and gives the record its signature raw feel so hey i won’t complain lol. but once you get past those highlights… the quality dips. the album is all over the place. a ballad here and there are pretty dull, the kind of songs that sound like anyone could have written them. “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket” especially feels lifeless compared to the punchy tracks before it. and then there’s the outro, “It’s True That We Love One Another,” which took such a random country turn that i genuinely had to check if the album skipped to another project or something but no 🤣. unfortunately i just couldn’t bare it so i couldn’t even finish it. it completely breaks the mood the album spent under an hour building. overall yeah, Elephant has some absolute classics, some strong deep cuts, and then a bunch of tracks that don’t really hold up to the rest of the tracklist. it’s still a decent enough album with great moments, but it’s definitely uneven. 3 and a half ⭐️.