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. Produced by vocalist and guitarist Jack White, it continues the "back-to-basics" approach from the band's previous album White Blood Cells (2001). It was mostly recorded across two weeks at Toe Rag Studios in April and May 2002,[a] and features lyrics about the "death of the sweetheart" in American popular culture.
Elephant is widely recognized as an influential 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. It has sold over four million units worldwide, making it the band's best-selling album.
Background and production
Jack: "Meg is very shy and I'm the extrovert. It can be exactly the opposite when we're onstage–sometimes I become innocent and Meg becomes very powerful and energetic. Hence the Elephant title–it represents both of us. our personalities onstage and in real life."
Meg: "And I love the idea of this really innocent creature, the elephant, that's simultaneously big and thunderous."
–The White Stripes on how the album's title came to be.[2]
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.[3][4] On certain releases, "Hypnotize" was mistakenly marked as recorded in April, which was corrected on the 20th anniversary release.[5]
Guitarist and vocalist Jack White produced the album with antiquated equipment, including an 8-track and tape machine.[6] Computers were not used during Elephant's 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.[7] The band often exhausted the limits of the 8-track recorder.[8]
Music and lyrics
Composition and sound
Elephant uses a DigiTech Whammy to create a bass-like sound.
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.[16] 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",[17][18] and perseverance, demonstrated by "Little Acorns".[19][20] 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."[21]
Songs 1–7
Originally conceived as an idea for what could be a potential James Bond theme, "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.[18] The song, which lacks a chorus, would ultimately take on a life of its own 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.
"I was thinking about a time in high school when I turned my books in to the math teacher and said I refuse to learn from you any more. The song’s about asking questions. A lot of people are taught just to regurgitate information. People don’t care if you learn any more. Opinion gets trampled on."
"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,[18] however he later came to admit they went "too far".[22]
"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. 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.
"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.[18]
First performed in 1999, not long after the release of their debut album,[24] "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; it is Meg's favorite White Stripes song.[18]
Songs 8–14
"Ball and Biscuit", named after a microphone used in the studio,[25] 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.[18] 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."[25] The song has been used in media such as the intro of the 2010 film The Social Network.
"The Hardest Button to Button", a phrase inspired by Jack's father, is as a metaphor for the "odd man out" of a family according to Jack. It was the album's second single and its music video was directed by Michel Gondry, a frequent collaborator of the band. It was filmed around Manhattan across 2 days, featuring Jack and Meg playing their instruments which multiply with every beat using pixilation. The video was parodied in The Simpsons episode "Jazzy and the Pussycats", with the band making a cameo.
"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.[18]
"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".[18] The song had existed by at least June 2001,[26] and was performed in January 2002,[27] 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.[28]
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 record.[18]
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.[29]
"It's True That We Love One Another" features Holly Golightly as a guest vocalist;[30] 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.[18] The premise of the song is that Jack and Holly are having a lovers' spat and Meg is trying to get them to reconcile.[31]
Artwork
Reissues of Elephant often change the color of Meg's dress or Jack's outfit.
Similar to the band's other albums, Elephant's cover art and liner notes are exclusively in red, white, and black.[32] On the reverse side of the US edition, all of the number "3"s are in red (disregarding the authorization notes at the bottom).[32] The cryptic symbolism of the album art includes a skull sitting on the floor in the background, as well as peanuts and peanut shells in the foreground, and on the circus travel trunk appears the mark "III", Jack's signature.[33][34] 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!'"[35][33]
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.[36] 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,[37] 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.[38][39] The advanced copy was on red and white vinyl, while the RSD copy has red, black and white colored vinyl in 2013.[40] A 20th anniversary limited edition has Jack wearing all white similar to the limited 2003 Australian pressing.[41]
The artwork of Elephant has become iconic.[16] It appeared on Billboard's list of "The 100 Best Album Covers of All Time".[42]
Promotion and release
The White Stripes performing in 2005
The track list for Elephant was announced in January 2003 to NME,[43] and four singles were announced to promote the album.[44] After a debate with XL Recordings,[45] "Seven Nation Army" was released as the lead single on February 17.[46] The song peaked at number 76 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's first entry on the chart,[47] while reaching the top 10 in the United Kingdom and entering multiple international territories;[48] it also became the first garage rock song to top Billboard's Modern Rock Songs chart.[49] In March, Elephant was given to NME for an early review.[14] The White Stripes were set to tour that same month, but postponed after Meg broke her wrist.[50]
Elephant was officially released on April 1 by V2 Records in the United States and XL in the United Kingdom.[51] The band began their promotional tour on June 13, and performed for six weeks across North America until July 23.[52] "The Hardest Button to Button" was released as the second single on August 11,[b] which peaked in the top 10 of the US Alternative Songs chart and drew attention for its music video.[54] "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" was released as the third single on September 1,[55] which became their first work to chart in the Netherlands and New Zealand.[56][57] The fourth and final single, "There's No Home for You Here", was released on March 15, 2004 and failed to replicate the success of its predecessors.[58] That same year, the band released their first concert film, Under Blackpool Lights, which entered multiple charts.[59]
Elephant has continued to be reissued by Jack's Third Man Records, notably on anniversary dates. In 2013, Third Man Records released a limited edition vinyl reissue of Elephant, in celebration of the album's 10-year anniversary, which were pressed at United Record Pressing in Nashville, TN.[60] In January 2023, a mono remix of the album, titled Elephant XX, was announced and later released exclusively through Third Man Records.[61][62] That same year, a deluxe edition for the anniversary was released with live recordings from a performance in Chicago's Aragon Ballroom.[63][64]
Elephant received widespread acclaim from music critics; review aggregating website Metacritic reports a normalized score of 92 out of 100 based on 28 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[75][76] In a perfect 5 star review, AllMusic critic Heather Phares said Elephant "overflows with quality".[10]David Fricke of Rolling Stone called Elephant "a work of pulverizing perfection," and believed it exceeded "the plantation holler of 2000's De Stijl and 2001's White Blood Cells with blues that both pop and bleed".[77] John Mulvey of NME rated the album 9/10 and stated that "The eloquence, barbarism, tenderness and sweat-drenched vitality of Elephant make it the most fully-realised White Stripes album yet."[69] The Los Angeles Times'sRobert Hilburn claimed that the band earned more respect "than any other U.S. band since Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails" and compared the listening experience of Elephant to "playing chess with a tournament pro -- an experience so full of unexpected twists and turns that you find yourself trying to guess where he's (Jack) going, only to marvel at his choices."[78]
Alexis Petridis of The Guardian called Elephant their "apotheosis" and wrote that "the White Stripes' music seems almost elemental, their power undeniable: it is clear why they are the only band to have transcended the indie ghetto."[79]Uncut magazine remarked that "Elephant is where the tabloid phenomenon of summer 2001 prove they are no flash in the pan by making a truly phenomenal record."[80] In contrast, Jon Pareles of The New York Times, while praising the continuation of their "back to basics" template, felt that "the quest—for something that might as well be called heart—is still ahead of them."[12] Rob Brunner of Entertainment Weekly deemed Elephant a "front-loaded Jack White powerhouse" and called the band half-talented, criticizing Meg's drumming.[81] Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork was similarly negative in his review, believing Jack's blending of elements seemed superficial and Meg's drumming was "pancake-handed".[82]Lorraine Ali of Newsweek criticized the band's gimmicks but concluded that the album "still sounds great".[83]
Elephant entered the Billboard 200 at number six after first week sales of 126,000 units and spent 58 weeks on the chart, the longest of any White Stripes album.[95][96] It was certified platinum in the United States in September 2003, and ended the year at number 57 on the Billboard 200.[97] That same month, it received a platinum certification in Canada.[98] In the UK, the album topped the UK Albums Chart and spent 55 weeks on the chart.[48] It was certified double platinum in October 2003 and finished the year at number 22 on the UK Albums Chart.[99]
In October 2009, Elephant was certified double platinum in Australia.[100] In March 2023, ahead of the album's 20th anniversary, it received a double platinum certification in the United States.[101] By December 2003, the album was certified triple platinum in Canada and the United Kingdom.[48] As of 2025, Elephant has earned the most certifications of any White Stripes album.[102]
Legacy
Elephant and its singles played a significant role in the popularity of the White Stripes. Pictured are band members Meg (left) and Jack White (right) in 2007.
Since its release, Elephant has been cited by critics as a landmark album of the 2000s rock movements and the White Stripes's best work.[103][104] Sarah Boden of The Guardian observed that, by the end of the 2000s, "nobody matched Jack and Meg when it came to creating a colossal sound out of such basic ingredients. Elephant, after all, was the release that banished preconceptions about the White Stripes' self-consciously limiting format and affirmed that they were consistently and swaggeringly magnificent."[105] Tom Breihan of Stereogum deemed the album as the band's "show-and-prove moment. They showed, and they proved." Breihan further wrote that "the vast majority of Elephant holds together as a mean, surly, pretty statement of rock dominance. The pressure was on, but they weren't gonna crack."[106]Ultimate Classic Rock's Michael Gallucci declared that Elephant sparked a "rock revolution" and made guitar-based music prominent again, calling it a "masterpiece".[107]
The success of "Seven Nation Army" boosted the album's reach and sales, becoming the White Stripes's signature song and most enduring work.[108] Writers at Rolling Stone and NME deemed it a career-changing hit,[109] while the latter publication said the song propelled the band "from their garage rock beginnings to an entirely new level of acclaim".[110] After its initial run on music charts, the song—especially its riff—grew in popularity as a result of its usage in sports. Erik Adams of The A.V. Club attributed the song's popularity to its simplicity, a characteristic that he remarked makes the song "instantly familiar" and "instantly memorized".[111] "Seven Nation Army" and other tracks from Elephant are among the band's most recognizable songs.[112][113]
In March 2003, a month before its release, NME ranked Elephant at 74 on their list of the "100 Best Albums of All Time" list.[114] Halfway through the 2000s, it appeared in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[115] In 2009, Billboard ranked it at number nine in its list of the Top 20 Albums of the Decade.[116] That same year, Rolling Stone ranked it number five on their list of the 100 Best Albums of the 2000s.[117] Other publications that included Elephant on their decade-best albums lists include Complex,[118]Consequence,[119]NME,[120]Paste,[121]Pitchfork,[122]Spin,[123]Slant,[124] and Uncut[125] In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked Elephant at 390 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, dropping it to 449 in the 2020 revision.[126][127] In 2013, NME ranked the album 114 on their list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[128] Also in 2013, readers at Mojo voted Elephant as the most influential album of the last 20 years.[129] In 2019, The Guardian ranked it 48 on their The 100 Best Albums of the 21st Century list.[130] In 2020, Newsweek ranked it 81 on their 100 Best Rock Albums of All Time;[131] the same publication ranked it 13 on their 50 Best Rock Albums from the 21st Century in 2021.[132]
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
Notes
↑Although most of Elephant was recorded in April and May 2002, three of the album's tracks were recorded in November 2001.
↑First released to US alternative radio on August 11, 2003.[53]
References
↑"Going for Adds". Radio & Records. No.1516. August 8, 2003. p.26.
↑"NME's 100 Best Albums of All Time!". NME: 30. March 8, 2003.
↑Dimery, Robert; Lydon, Michael (March 23, 2010). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: Revised and Updated Edition. Universe. ISBN978-0-7893-2074-2.
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