Jack White Archives

Jack White Played a Wild National Anthem at Detroit Tigers Opening Day

Posted by Ben Easton at 10:05 am 1 Response »

Apr 122022

Jack White National Anthem Detroit Tigers

Jack White is coming off a gangbusters weekend. Last Friday saw the release of Fear of the Dawn, White’s first of two solo albums that will be released this year. He also kicked off his Supply Chain Issues Tour, supporting the new record with a sold-out hometown show at the Detroit Masonic Temple (where a side auditorium bears his name in tribute). As reported by the Detroit Free Press, he also got married on stage on Friday night to his longtime girlfriend, the musician and songwriter Olivia Jean (in the wake of a performance of The White Stripes’ matrimonially-minded “Hotel Yorba” and just a few miles down the road from the song’s namesake). If this all weren’t enough, Jack White also made a midday appearance at Detroit’s Comerica Park baseball stadium on the very same day — playing his first cover of the National Anthem for the Detroit Tigers Opening Day game. Continue reading »

The Raconteurs Unveil Surprising Donovan Cover Off Comeback Album

Posted by Ray Padgett at 2:00 pm No Responses »

Apr 162019

When Jack White and Brendan Benson’s band The Raconteurs announced their first album in 11 years, one track name immediately jumped out at us: 07. Hey Gyp (Dig The Slowness) (Donovan Cover). It’s not only that White is a master of the cover song (he’s appeared on our year-end lists more than anyone else I believe), but also…Donovan?? Definitely a surprising choice, especially for a man who’s literally performed with Bob Dylan. Maybe he watched Don’t Look Back recently. Continue reading »

Hear a Young Jack White Cover Blondie’s “One Way or Another”

Posted by Ray Padgett at 12:53 pm No Responses »

Oct 102018

In late 1997, a Michigan trio of teenagers calling themselves 400 Pounds of Punk released their only album, a five-song cassette called He Once Ate A Small Child. Calling it obscure puts it mildly; until today, there was no mention of this release anywhere on the internet. “I doubt more than a half-dozen people even knew about it,” writes Third Man Records co-founder Ben Blackwell (that’s him on the left in the photo) on Discogs. Blackwell has changed that, posting a track from it in honor of Cassette Week. That track, a raw and rocking cover of Blondie’s “One Way or Another,” features a young Jack White on vocals. Continue reading »

Pick Five: Lena Hall

Posted by Ray Padgett at 3:22 pm 3 Responses »

Jun 262018

In Pick Five, great artists pick five cover songs that matter to them.

Broadway star Lena Hall (Kinky Boots, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) has been releasing an ambitious series of EPs this year. Every month, she covers a handful of tracks by a favorite artist. In what she’s dubbed the Obsessed series, she’s already tackled Elton John, Peter Gabriel, and The Cranberries. June’s installment say her bringing her Broadway belt to five Radiohead songs; here’s a highlight:

Jack White is next month’s featured artist, and I’m quite excited for that one. As the covers Hall selected for us demonstrate, she’s something of a White Stripes superfan. She’ll hopefully preview one or two of her upcoming Stripes covers at her New York concert tomorrow night, “Six Months of Obsessions: From Radiohead to Hedwig” at Public Arts (tickets here).

Check out Hall’s cover-song picks below. Sure hope Dolly Parton and Soundgarden are on her Obsessed docket… Continue reading »

Pick Five: Geographer

Posted by Ray Padgett at 12:12 pm No Responses »

May 022018

In Pick Five, great artists tell us about five cover songs that matter to them.

We first came across Geographer in 2011 with his great cover of New Order’s “Age of Consent.” Seven years later, he’s blossomed into a killer electropop producer, singer, and songwriter. His new EP Alone Time finds him pushing his pop instincts to their limit, on five insanely catchy dance jams that would work equally well in a club or on headphones. Here’s a sample, new single “Read My Mind”:

Geographer main man Mike Deni told PopMatters “Musically, [the EP] represents an obsession with pop music that went to its furthest reaches and boomeranged back again into making not just lyrics, but sounds, that matter.” On the five covers he picked out for us, though, he dug beyond that pop music obsession into his songwriter roots, picking classic performances by the likes of Jeff Buckley and Harry Nilsson (though fans of his poppier side needn’t worry; by the end he gets to a “karaoke classic”). Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of April

Posted by Ray Padgett at 3:00 pm 4 Responses »

Apr 302018

April was the best month for covers of the year so far. There’s no particular reason for that, I suspect. These things just ebb and flow. But the fact remains that it was a proverbial embarrassment of riches, as the length of the list below confirms.

As always, there’s no quality difference between the main picks and the honorable mentions; a cover’s categorization is only determined by how much I had to say about it. Continue reading »