Elephant (album)

Elephant is the fourth studio album by American rock duo the White Stripes. It was released on April 1, 2003 in the United States by V2 Records and in the United Kingdom by XL Recordings. It was produced by vocalist and guitarist Jack White, and was mostly recorded across two weeks at Toe Rag Studios in April and May 2002. Continuing the "back-to-basics" approach from the band's previous album, White Blood Cells (2001), it features lyrics about the "death of the sweetheart" in American popular culture.

Elephant reached the top ten of multiple territories, peaking at number six on the US Billboard 200 and topping the UK Albums Chart, and achieved multiple platinum status in several countries. It sold over four million units worldwide, making it the band's best-selling album. The album produced the hit singles "Seven Nation Army", "The Hardest Button to Button" and "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself", the first of which boosted its sales. The album received widespread critical acclaim and several accolades, including a nomination for Album of the Year and winning Best Alternative Music Album at the 2004 Grammy Awards.

Elephant is widely recognized as a key work of the 2000s indie and garage rock revivals, solidifying Jack and Meg White's leading positions in the movements. It has been named by several publications as the White Stripes's magnum opus and features on several publications' listings of the best albums of all time.

Background and production

The White Stripes recorded Elephant over ten days in April through May 2002 at Toe Rag Studios in London, with the exception of "It's True That We Love One Another", "Hypnotize" and "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" being recorded in November 2001, with the latter taking place at BBC's Maida Vale Studios. On certain releases, "Hypnotize" was mistakenly marked as recorded in April, which was corrected on the 20th anniversary release.

Guitarist and vocalist Jack White produced the album with antiquated equipment, including an 8-track and tape machine. Computers were not used during Elephant writing, recording, or production. A rumor spread that no equipment created after 1963 was used in production, though Jack says it was promoted by "lazy" journalists and never fact-checked. In fact, most of the equipment was from the 1980s according to the album's engineer, Liam Watson, who was the co-founder of Toe Rag; he also called the rumor "a load of crap". The band often exhausted the limits of the 8-track recorder. All songs, including B-sides, were mixed in one day at the studio.

Music and lyrics

Composition and sound

thumb|Elephant uses a [[DigiTech Whammy to create a bass-like sound.|left]]

Elephant is a garage rock, blues rock, and punk blues record that advances the "back to basics" approach from the White Stripes's previous album, White Blood Cells (2001). The band expanded their style with a bass line alongside lead and rhythm guitar, in addition to greater use of keyboards and pianos.

Jack wrote most of the lyrics on Elephant, and its music was composed by the band. Its main themes revolve around the idea of the "death of the sweetheart" in both American culture and popular culture. Jack observed that "You look at your average teenager with the body piercings and the tattoos. You have white kids going around talking in ghetto accents because they think that makes them hard. It's so cool to be hard. We're against that." Other themes on the record include love, demonstrated by tracks such as "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" and "In the Cold, Cold Night", and perseverance, demonstrated by "Little Acorns". With Elephant, Meg White hoped to show that "it's O.K. not to care about anything. Everything can be judged, everything can be trashed." Five songs were written in the studio. With the exception of "It's True That We Love One Another", acoustic songs were performed on a borrowed Martin guitar.

Songs 1–7

Originally conceived as an idea for what could be a potential James Bond theme, the album's first single, "Seven Nation Army", was created in 2002, during a sound check while the band was on tour in Australia. Jack downtuned his guitar by an octave rather than using a bass guitar to create the famous riff. The theme of the song surrounds the gossip the White Stripes endured, the intrusive nature of the press, and the commercial aspects of the music industry. The song, which lacks a chorus, would ultimately take on a life of its own as a de facto sports anthem in stadiums around the world. It was typically the final song or encore in a White Stripes show, and Jack frequently performs it in his solo concerts.

"Black Math" was inspired by an issue Jack had with his high school math teacher, basing the premise around the idea that students are taught what to think rather than how to think.

"There's No Home for You Here" was created by Jack layering about 12 vocal tracks on the 8-track recorder, however he later came to admit they went "too far".

"I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" is a cover of the Dusty Springfield song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The White Stripes had already performed it many times between 1999 and 2003, before being officially recorded as a single, as the original was a favorite of Meg's, described as her "baby". Jack considers it one of their best songs and particularly liked his singing on the track. The music video was directed by Sofia Coppola, whose idea it was for British supermodel Kate Moss to pole dance erotically. The White Stripes themselves are not featured in the video at all.

"In the Cold, Cold Night" was written by Jack for Meg to perform, inspired by musicians Mazzy Star and Peggy Lee. It features Meg performing leading vocals for the first time ("In the Cold, Cold Night"), having only performed background vocals for De Stijl and White Blood Cells previously.

"I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart" represents the "sweetheart" ethos of the record, and was compared to the work of musicians Big Star and Paul McCartney.

First performed live in July 1999, not long after the release of their debut album, "You've Got Her in Your Pocket" is considered to be about an obsessive lover and by Jack's account, soured the mood at Toe Rag during the recording process as it was played directly after "It's True That We Love One Another"; it is Meg's favorite White Stripes song. It was likely written between late 1998 and early 1999, as part of a hobby called "Living Room Sessions" that occurred at a local Detroit venue called the Garden Bowl that Jack frequented and one of many songs from his former band Two-Star Tabernacle that became a White Stripes song. It was recorded in stereo, for which Watson had to consult the BBC manual, on a Martin guitar.

Songs 8–14

"Ball and Biscuit", named after a microphone used in the studio, is the longest song in their discography at over 7 minutes; it is built around the folkloric theme of the seventh son, corresponding to Jack's actual birth order among his brothers, as well as being the "third man" of a woman's sexual partners. Jack said at the time, "I wanted it to be making fun of cockiness. It kind of disgusts me when you see that in our environment, that it's so attractive to women—that cockiness."

"Little Acorns" was a spoken word monologue by broadcast journalist Mort Crim, whose speech was already on the tape (given to Jack by one of his brothers), that Jack had started recording piano on. He was unaware that Crim's vocals had been there until he played the tape to hear the piano, and based the song around the story.

"Hypnotize" was originally written by Jack for the Detroit rock band The Hentchmen, though they didn't use it. At 1:48, it's one of shortest songs in their discography, with Jack describing it as "rock n' roll length". The song had existed by at least June 2001, and was performed in January 2002, over a year before its release on the album, but was not performed after 2003, until Jack started performing it again in his own solo concerts over 20 years later.

Essentially a filler track, "The Air Near My Fingers" was almost taken off the album, but was kept due to its motif of mothers and its bridge. Jack described himself as hating everything else about the song.

Critics perceived the song "Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" as misogynistic or sexist, and Meg herself took issue with the lyrics, though Jack protested the claims of misogyny in that it was merely about the differences between male and female psychology and that one side wasn't better than the other. The song was supposed to be on White Blood Cells.

"It's True That We Love One Another" features Holly Golightly as a guest vocalist; it is the only album of their discography to feature singers other than Jack and Meg. The song was inspired by "Creeque Alley" by the Mamas & the Papas. The premise of the song is that Jack and Holly are having a lovers' spat and Meg is trying to get them to reconcile.

Similar to the band's other albums, Elephant<nowiki/>'s cover art and liner notes are exclusively in red, white, and black. On the reverse side of the US edition, all of the number "3"s are in red (disregarding the authorization notes at the bottom). Jack is displaying a mano cornuta and looking at a light bulb intensely, while Meg is barefoot and appears to be crying, with a rope tied around her ankle and leading out of frame. Both have small white ribbons tied to their fingers. In an interview with Q Magazine in 2007, Jack said, "If you study the picture carefully, Meg and I are elephant ears in a head-on elephant. But it's a side view of an elephant, too, with the tusks leading off either side." He went on to say, "I wanted people to be staring at this album cover and then maybe two years later, having stared at it for the 500th time, to say, 'Hey, it's an elephant!'"

The album has been released with at least six different versions of the front cover—different covers for the CD and LP editions in the US, the UK and elsewhere. On the US CD edition, Meg is sitting on the left of a circus travel trunk and Jack is sitting on the right holding a cricket bat over the ground, while on the UK CD edition, the cricket bat touches the ground and the image is mirrored so that their positions on the trunk are reversed. The UK vinyl album cover is the same as the US CD, but differs in that the color hues are much darker. The Record Store Day 2013 vinyl and August 2013 180-gram black vinyl reissues have Meg wearing a black dress instead of the usual white dress; the only other release with Meg wearing the black dress was on the V2 advanced copy back in 2003. The advanced copy was on red and white vinyl, while the RSD copy has red, black and white colored vinyl in 2013. A 20th anniversary limited edition has Jack wearing all white similar to the limited 2003 Australian pressing.

The artwork of Elephant has become iconic.

Promotion and release

thumb|The White Stripes performing in 2005

The track list for Elephant was announced in January 2003 to NME, and four singles were announced to promote the album. After a debate with XL Recordings, "Seven Nation Army" was released as the lead single on February 17. The song peaked at number 76 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's first entry on the chart, while reaching the top 10 in the United Kingdom and entering multiple international territories; it also became the first garage rock song to top Billboards Modern Rock Songs chart. In March, Elephant was given to NME for an early review. Although shows were postponed when Meg broke her wrist and months later Jack severely broke his fingers in a car accident on his 28th birthday, the music videos for "Seven Nation Army" and "The Hardest Button to Button" were still filmed during their respective injuries, and their casts are visible in the videos. The band began their promotional tour on June 13, and performed for six weeks across North America until July 23. "The Hardest Button to Button" was released as the second single on August 11,