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.
Recording and production
The White Stripes originally visited Toe Rag Studios late July 2001, at the behest of British drummer Bruce Brand, the day after a performance at the 100 Club in London, England. Brand and Toe Rag proprietor, Liam Watson, who served as the album's engineer, were in a band called the Masonics. The Masonics' U.S. agent arranged for them to open for the White Stripes during that performance and asked Brand to assist The White Stripes while they were in the United Kingdom. The White Stripes returned to the studio in November 2001 to record several songs: "It's True That We Love One Another", "You've Got Her in Your Pocket" and "Hypnotize", whereas "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" was recorded at BBC's Maida Vale Studios. They returned to Toe Rag again in April 2002 to record the rest of the album. On certain releases, "Hypnotize" was mistakenly marked as recorded in April, which was corrected on the 20th anniversary release. The White Stripes had planned to release the album in fall 2002, but the unexpected popularity of White Blood Cells pushed the release to spring 2003.
Toe Rag had a reputation within the garage rock world as the kind of studio artists "dreamed of recording at." In contrast to supposedly hedonistic Los Angeles recording studios with "a cappuccino machine and video games between takes," according to guitarist and vocalist Jack White, Toe Rag was a "freezing" and "uncomfortable" setting that forced them to concentrate on the work and they found the studio "mind-blowing." In early 2000s, Toe Rag's location in Hackney was a notoriously violent area of London and a "harsh environment", regardless of which Jack considers it the "best studio experience [they've] ever had." All songs, including B-sides, were mixed in one day at the studio; Jack suggested the idea of mixing it at Abbey Road Studios, though Watson ultimately chose to do it at Toe Rag. Watson engineered the album in shifts of 6 hours at a time across approximately 10 days, although there were some days off during the two weeks booked at the studio in order to accommodate other work on the schedule such as concerts. The recording dates reportedly took place between April 24, 2002 and May 13, 2002. The album was recorded for a budget of a reported £4,000 (or £6,000 if accounting for the cost of the hotel stay and other extraneous expenses) and Jack returned in late September 2002 to re-record and remix certain vocals.
Jack 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 including the main mixing desk was from the 1980s according to Liam Watson; he also called the rumor "a load of crap." A REDD .17 mixing desk originally from Abbey Road Studios was indeed present at Toe Rag, however it was not the one used on this album as Watson used a Calrec M Series model originally from the BBC.
The White Stripes often exhausted the limits of the 8-track recorder. Watson felt a 24-track recorder would have taken longer and they both believed 8-track was suitable considering that, in the past, the Beatles had famously done more with less. Watson used "Seven Nation Army" as a demonstration: the song was played live with a guide vocal on one track and Jack's guitar going through two amplifiers on their own tracks using Shure and AKG dynamic microphones. The drums were mixed to one track except for the bass drum which had its own track. After repeating the process with a second guitar on spare tracks, the main vocal, which used a Neumann condenser microphone going to the Calrec console and a Shure dynamic microphone going to an amplifier (which itself used an AKG dynamic microphone), both microphones were combined with tape delay and spring reverb through a compressor, replacing the live guide vocal. A second vocal passage, recorded exactly the same way as the main vocal, took the last unused track of the one-inch. The lead guitar and second vocal took the 8th track, for which Watson mixed the microphones to mono to resolve the issue of running out of tracks. Multiple songs, such as "Ball and Biscuit", "Little Acorns", and "The Hardest Button to Button" did not use all 8 tracks.
Watson extensively used 4 Shure S4SD Unidyne III microphones, from the top of the snare drum to Jack's live guide vocals and amplifiers. A Neumann U 67 condenser microphone was primarily used for the main vocals. Jack's Fender Twin Reverb and Watson's Selmer Truvoice Zodiac Twin 30 amplifier respectively were used on the album (as Jack did not want to ship his tried-and-true Silvertone amplifier to the United Kingdom) with Shure 545 and AKG D25 microphones. AKG dynamic and condenser microphones were used on the drums. A UREI 1176 compressor was used for one vocal track and that was the only outboard gear used on the album. Mix down occurred on a BASF 900. "You've Got Her In Your Pocket" was recorded in stereo using a Coles 4038 microphone, an Altec M11 condenser microphone, and a borrowed Martin guitar; Watson had to consult the BBC manual during the recording process as he did not generally record acoustic guitars in stereo and used its omnidirectional "figure 8" method. "I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart", "Little Acorns", "The Air Near My Fingers", "It's True That We Love One Another", and "Good to Me" were performed on the studio's dilapidated Herrberger Brooks upright piano, which in 2014, Jack and its Polish owner coordinated in Sopot to auction it for charity.
Music and lyrics
Composition and sound
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 album was originally envisioned as a melancholic project, though Jack clarified that they did not go into the album with an intended sound or genre, and his comments were so that fans would not expect more of "Fell in Love with a Girl" and White Blood Cells. The album would have been made regardless of whether the band achieved popularity, however, the energy of the United Kingdom and the fervor of British fans changed its trajectory. Meg deemed Elephant "a tribute to England" and hoped to show that "it's O.K. not to care about anything. Everything can be judged, everything can be trashed." Jack called it a "guitar album" since he incorporated solos, a restriction he lifted for this album, tapping into the energy of his previous work with the Go.
The lyrics on Elephant, written almost entirely by Jack, revolve around the idea of the "death of the sweetheart" in both American culture and popular culture. He 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".
Elephant's music was composed by the band. About one-third of the album was written in the studio, while the rest was written in the hotel room. With the exception of "It's True That We Love One Another", acoustic songs were performed on a borrowed Martin guitar. The band expanded their style with a bass line alongside lead and rhythm guitar, in addition to greater use of keyboards and pianos. Jack infamously used a DigiTech Whammy pedal to mimic the sound of a bass guitar for several of Elephant's tracks. He did so in "Seven Nation Army" and "The Hardest Button to Button" by connecting a semi-acoustic guitar to the pedal and lowering the pitch by an octave. "Seven Nation Army", "The Hardest Button to Button", and "Ball and Biscuit" are what Jack wrote to be "21st century blues" songs.
Songs 1–7
Originally conceived as an idea for a potential James Bond theme, "Seven Nation Army" was conceived in 2002 during a sound check while the band toured 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 their observations of industry gossip, 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 continues to perform 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. It was frequently used as a concert opener as Jack felt it was "hard to whip out in the middle of a set." It was originally written when Jack was a member of The Go. "There's No Home for You Here" was created by Jack layering between 12 and 15 vocal tracks on the 8-track recorder, however he later came to admit they went "too far" as well as "broke [their] rules." The song is one of two tracks on the album that were "not [Jack's] favorites" (the other being "The Air Near My Fingers"), though it was one of Watson's favorites.
"I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself", originally a Dusty Springfield song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, was a staple of the live band's repertoire. It was officially recorded as a single as the original was a favorite of Meg's, described as her "baby." Jack considered the original Bacharach version a "blues song in its purest form" in its essence outside of its pop production. He considers it one of the band's best songs and one of his best vocal performances. 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, although they were present for filming at a sound stage in New York City's Greenwich Village.