The Story Behind Seven Nation Army — The White Stripes
Hello guys, it’s Vic Richardson. Today I want to talk about the story behind “Seven Nation Army”. Enjoy!
The title of the song originates from what Jack White thought the Salvation Army was called when he was a child.
This song deals with The White Stripes’ rising popularity and the negatives that came with it. After White came up with the riff, he devised a storyline in which a protagonist comes into town and all his friends are gossiping about him.
This, along with the rest of the album, was recorded on analogue equipment that was over 50 years old at Toe Rag Studios. Toe Rag Studios were set up in London in 1991 as a strictly analogue enterprise using only pre-1960 studio equipment. The success of Elephant established Toe Rag as a trendy antidote to digital music-making.
The riff was composed at a sound check before a show at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne, Australia. “jack didn’t have lyrics for it until later on and He was just calling it ‘Seven Nation Army’ — that’s what he used to call the Salvation Army when he was a kid. So that was just a way for him to remember which one he was talking about, but it took on a new meaning with the lyrics.”
According to Jack White, neither the labels in America or in the UK wanted to put this out as the first single. They eventually relented and it became the White Stripes’ first Hot 100 hit in the US and Top 10 in Britain.
But why 7 ? Well this number is an essential characteristic of this track, the riff consists of seven notes that are repeated in the same order throughout the song
Jack White once said that the main riff was the riff he planned to use if they ever got asked to write the theme to the next James Bond film.
Recording
The White Stripes have no bass player, so the popular riff is actually a guitar with an octave effect to sound like a bass.
On the album, No computers were used during the writing, recording, mixing or mastering.
Covers
Artist to cover this song include Audioslave, Metallica & many more. Italian soccer fans latched onto this song as their national team played to victory in the 2006 World Cup.
White was delighted explaining that: “Nothing is more beautiful in music than when people embrace a melody and allow it to enter the pantheon of folk music,
Curiosity
The Salvation Army has featured in a number of songs, the best known being The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever, which is about a Salvation Army home in Liverpool where John Lennon used to go.
If you have a song that you like to know more about let me know.
Much love, I’ll see you soon
