The Best Songs of the 2000s: #108

#108: "Seven Nation Army" (2003) - The White Stripes


As if to throw a big middle finger to their detractors, the White Stripes open the first song on their first album with an instrument that hadn't been on any of the three prior records: the bass guitar. It's a great rock bass riff too, opening the door ceremonially to Meg White's four-on-the-floor kick, all announcing the coming of a ticked-off Jack White, walking towards us, getting closer and closer, vocals climbing from speak-sing to falsetto to full-blown roar. His fuzz-guitar amps mimics the bass riff as it mimics his anger and his envy and his jealousy and his rage at all the gossip and ignorance and betrayal in his life and in his world. It's a little blues, a little Zeppelin, a little Pixies, and a little Nirvana, all wrapped up and striped in a red, white, and black package at our front door. We shake it, we hear it ticking, but we open it still, only to find it blow up in our face, our last images of Jack and Meg walking side by side--but not hand in hand--out to the horizon, their contours framed in shadow by the setting sun, this little Western movie epic of a record, a John Ford film on wax.